Where the Kissing Never Stops

by Ron Koertge

  “If you’re serious,” I said, “Mr. Kramer and I are planting tomorrow. You could help.”

  “Me too?” said Sully.

  “Everybody, sure. Just be here at six,” I said.

  “Not in the morning.”

  I nodded.

  We began to drift toward the cars. Rachel put her arm around me and I was acutely conscious of her fingers tucked inside my waistband.

  We waited awkwardly beside Sully’s father’s belligerently shiny Cadillac.

  “Uh, why don’t you guys stick around?” Rachel said lamely.

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Stick around.”

  “We should stay,” Peggy said. “Just to drive them crazy.”

  We wanted to be alone, but once we were, neither of us knew exactly what to do. I looked toward the car, then decided against it — too crude. But she was looking, too.

  “Do you need to get home?” I asked.

  “No. I was just… thinking.”

  “About my mom’s Saturn?”

  “Sort of.”

  “You look good, Rachel.”

  “You too.”

  “I’m just dirty in a couple of the right places; you’re pretty.”

  “Peggy came over the other day and we went through my stuff. She showed me what to wear with what, and she was right. She breaks all those stupid fashion rules and she’s still right.”

  “Did she pick this out?” I felt the hem of her dress. Even it was warm.

  Rachel shook her head. “I did. But I was thinking of you all the time.”

  I took her hand. The sun was setting and the back window of the car glowed like neon: VACANCY.

  “What’d your dad think of Peggy?”

  “He’d like it if I had a hundred girlfriends and no boyfriends at all.”

  “He doesn’t like me?”

  “It’s not you exactly. He’s just used to getting my undivided attention.”

  Rachel stopped and leaned against one dented fender. I kicked the tires lightly like a timid shopper.

  “You didn’t have boyfriends before?”

  “I was a lot younger,” she said sensibly. “And he didn’t want me to really like some guy and then have to move away.”

  “Your dad said that?”

  “We talk really easily. And he was probably right. But things are different now. I’m not fourteen and we’re not going to move. And even if we were, I’d like you anyway.”

  Her eyes — blue this time to match the dress she had picked out all by herself — met mine and held.

  “So do you want to sit in the car a little while before we go?” I asked.

  “God, yes.”

  I don’t think the doors had even slammed before Rachel and I started kissing like there was no tomorrow. I kissed her shoulders and arms. I kissed her neck and ears and I even did this weird thing by mistake where I had my tongue in her nose for a second.

  I even kissed the straps on her sundress, nibbling up and down them like a man eating corn. Rachel unbuttoned the shirt I had just buttoned and put her hand inside, which about drove me crazy; and then she started to make these random passes at my crotch. Or at least I think that was what was happening. So I peeked, and there was her right arm roaming around in the air like somebody trying to find a shoe under the bed. One minute it would be really close and the next way out over the floorboards. I felt like playing that kids’ game where you shout, “Cold, cold, warmer, warmer, hot, hot, hot!”

  Rachel and I were holding on to one another, still kissing, naturally, but also taking a little break, when she said, “Don’t forget your mother.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d just been thinking about my mom and what she’d said about birth control, because for the first time in my life it was clear to me that I might actually need it.

  I sat up and buttoned my shirt while Rachel shook out her skirt with both hands like someone making a bed.

  “Walker, have you ever done this before? What we just did, I mean the kissing and the other?”

  “The other?”

  She looked down at her hands. “You know, how we touched?”

  I wondered what she wanted to hear. Would a yes hurt her feelings, making her seem than less special? Would a no make me a wimp?

  “Not really,” I lied, “but…”

  “I guess I’m interested in how I did.” She sounded like a scholarship student. “Peggy,” she continued, “gave me a few hints.” Her eyes widened. “Some I’ll have to save until I’m thirty-five.”

  “It all felt great. Honest.”

  “I got dizzy,” she said happily.

  “Me too.”

  “I wish we didn’t have to go.”

  “I wish we could just stay here until they built the mall over us.”

  “That stupid mall,” she said mildly. “I like this place just the way it is.”

  As we drove, Rachel put her arm around my shoulders and played with my hair. I was really flattered. No one had ever done anything like that, but I’d seen it a thousand times with guys older than me or better-looking or with hotter cars. I could have driven around like that forever, Bradleyville’s version of the Flying Dutchman.

  I made a left at Octavia, going a block or two out of my way in hopes a few more people would see me being so eagerly caressed.

  “Your grades are pretty good, aren’t they?” she asked.

  Perfect: a carful of guys passed, going the other way. “Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess.”

  She trailed her fingers across the back of my neck. “Do you ever feel insecure?”

  “Only in the daytime and at night. Otherwise I’m fine.”

  Rachel smiled and kissed my shoulder, light as a wand.

  “Mr. Jenkins, my physics teacher, told me I didn’t belong in his accelerated class,” she said. “He told me he thought my counselor had made a mistake.”

  “Jenkins is that way. It’s his idea of motivation. He tried it on Sully.”

  “Did he on you?”

  “I don’t take those high-powered classes. Since I don’t know where I’m going, I guess I’m in no real hurry to get there.”

  “God, I used to be smart.” She stroked my neck, giving me long, smooth pets like I was a llama. “Mr. Jenkins really made me wonder.”

  I guess we’re all pretty much the same down deep. I mean, Rachel seemed to have it made — she was cute and had great clothes; she was rich; she’d been to interesting places and met important people. Yet she lay awake and wondered, too. All over town kids lay awake and wondered: Am I smart enough, pretty enough, strong enough, tall enough? If our fears were smoke, the town would be covered night and day by an inky pall.

  “Walker, do you think I’m smart?”

  I hesitated again, wondering what she wanted to hear and pretty much knowing what that was. Instead, though, I said, “I don’t know, Rachel.” I turned to her, letting the car drive itself for a few seconds. “I’m sure you are, but I’ve only really known you for a little while, so…”

  I thought for a second she might cry, and I was afraid I’d done the wrong thing by trying to do the right one. Instead, she kissed me.

  “What a great answer,” she exclaimed. “God, any other guy would’ve said, ‘Yeah, sure, of course,’ just to be nice or to make me feel better or whatever. Instead, you just told the truth.” She put both arms around me and squeezed. “Oh, Walker, let’s always tell each other the truth, okay? Always.”

  That was my chance to turn to her and say, “Look, about my mom…” But the words wouldn’t come out. I opened my mouth and nothing happened.

  It was still dark when I left the house the next morning, but when I got to Rachel’s, her father was already on the telephone, probably buying all the land south of the equator. He waved me into a seat, his manicured hand lolling in the sleeve of a velour robe. Nothing had been unpacked yet. Crates were still stacked around the spacious rooms; a suitcase lined in pink stood open, looking like an alligator that ate linen.

  “Goo
d Christ,” he said, hanging up the phone. “They act like I’m asking them to rezone the world.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked politely.

  “The city council.”

  “Is this for the Garden of Gardner?”

  He brightened. “Rachel told you. What about it? Tell me what you think.”

  “I don’t know exactly. It seems…”

  “Do you like Westgate?”

  “The old mall? No, I…”

  “Good for you. Westgate’s everything a mall doesn’t have to be. It’s overscaled and it’s dull. People only go there because it’s more fun than downtown.”

  “There isn’t much downtown to go to, thanks to Westgate.”

  “You think the mall pulled people out of the city? I think Bradleyville drove people to the mall. There’s always something to look at in a mall, always something to touch. And it’s all free and it’s all safe.”

  “I thought you just said it was dull.”

  “Compared to the Garden it is. Compared to the Garden it’s like an old stripper who never takes off her clothes. Who cares anyway, right?”

  “I care, that’s who.”

  “About what?”

  “Uh… malls.”

  He was getting excited, and poured himself some coffee from a silver carafe.

  “Really? Have you ever been to Milan?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s where old Giuseppe Mengoni started it all in 1865, and it’s still great: it’s the original hundred-percent location.”

  I wondered what Rachel was doing upstairs, but I dutifully asked, “What’s a hundred-percent location?”

  “A place that everybody has to pass and there’s something going on twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Sounds good if you have the pay-toilet concession.”

  He frowned, but not at my silly joke. “That’s what I want for Bradleyville. We’re living in the center of the United States.” He tapped on the table with his blunt but manicured index finger. “This could be the one-hundred-percent location for the republic.”

  “I’m almost ready,” Rachel shouted from somewhere above us.

  “Are you being nice to my daughter?” he asked abruptly.

  “Or do I just hit her with the hose in places where it won’t show?”

  He snorted instead of laughed. “I apologize. It’s just that Rachel has never been mistreated for an instant by anyone anywhere. I know you’re good to her. She likes you. She told me so herself.”

  “I like her, too.”

  “What about Kramer?”

  “I don’t like him as much, but then we haven’t been dating as long.”

  He smiled that patented half-smile. “Irreverent,” he said, “but not abrasive.” And he looked at me like I was one of my mother’s expensive wines. “And you know how to cut through the crap. I like that. I might be able to use you, Walker.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Was he offering me a job? If so, doing what? Cutting through the crap?

  “I talked to your mother and I talked to Kramer. She said to ask you.”

  “What about?”

  “Talking to Kramer.”

  I shrugged. “Talk to him about…”

  “Selling. Selling your land. Both of you. Or at least giving me an option to buy.”

  “I thought he wanted to sell.”

  “I thought he did, too. Now I’m hearing a lot of b.s. about the old homestead.”

  Just then Rachel came downstairs, sleepy and cute in low boots and jeans.

  “Be careful,” said her father, a comment that had as many layers as a wedding cake.

  Outside of town, Sully and Peggy sat on the hood of the Cadillac and waited; four Styrofoam cups of coffee steamed by the hood ornament, and Rachel reached for one with both hands.

  “I must be nuts,” she said, smiling. “Where’s the sun?” Then to Peggy, “You look great, kid.”

  “You like it?” She flounced the wide skirts of her prom dress. Or rather she flounced half her prom dress.

  “The Cub Scout shirt is a nice touch,” said Sully. He pointed to the sleeve. “This poor little weenie only got one stripe and that was for deportment. I can just see him sitting in the corner being good.”

  “I only got two,” I said. “One for deportment and the other for starting fires.”

  “They gave a stripe for arson?” asked Peggy.

  “Campfires.”

  Peggy rolled the sleeves of her shirt up to reveal a single pink opera glove. Then she tied the shirttails at her navel, revealing an inch or two of the whitest skin I’d ever seen.

  “Let’s go to work,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s plant them seeds, get in the crop, and get rich.”

  I pointed. “Here comes Mr. Kramer now,” and we watched his truck negotiate the dirt road, then stop and shudder as he got out. Mr. Kramer motioned for us, then patted the hood consolingly as the old Chevy quaked one last time, then settled down with a hiss.

  I introduced my friends. If he thought twice about somebody in half a dress, it didn’t show; he calmly shook Peggy’s gloved hand, then touched his cap politely.

  “I saw Rachel last night,” he said. “Her father poured so much wine in me I felt like a tough piece of meat he was trying to marinate.” Then he turned to me. “I tried to get hold of you the other day and got your momma instead.”

  “I was probably in school. Did you want…”

  “Nice woman, your mother. Said to talk to you. Said the land was yours and you were grown-up enough to do the right thing. Even apologized for being in bed at ten o’clock in the morning. Said she was a dancer and it was hard work. Made me wonder afterward if I might have seen her on the TV.”

  “A dancer?” said Rachel. “I thought —”

  “Bartender mostly,” Peggy said quickly. “But she can dance if…” She looked at me helplessly.

  “I thought she was a waitress.”

  “Well,” I said, “she’s a bartender-waitress.”

  Then, since I had the hyphens out anyway, I didn’t see any harm in using one more. “Actually a bartender-waitress-dancer in this little club, uh, bar-restaurant…”

  “In Kansas City,” Sully said. “We went once, remember, to pick her up after work?”

  “Oh, yeah. And it was nice: quiet, clean, a really nice neighborhood. And she doesn’t have to dance much, just when things get slow.”

  “Or really busy,” said Sully when Rachel looked bewildered.

  “How weird,” she said, shaking her head.

  “What’d you call me about?” I asked Mr. Kramer, desperate for any diversion.

  “Oh, about this place. I just wondered if you were dead set on selling.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  He shook his head slowly. “DiPrima neither, and none of the Fiscus boys. It’s not just us bumpkins, either. People in Bradleyville ain’t so sure anymore. Little by little not everybody’s sold on their hometown being the hub of the universe.”

  I guess we all turned to look at Rachel. She just grinned and said sensibly, “Well, we can’t settle it this morning. Anyway, it’s Daddy’s problem. Why don’t we do what we came for and get to work on this place?”

  “Here’s all there is to it,” Mr. Kramer said, motioning for Sully and me to lift four or five sacks of grain out of the scarred truck bed. He handed each of us a wide sling. “This here goes over one shoulder,” he said. “The seeds go into the bottom, then you walk along and scatter it like you’re feeding chickens.”

  “With our hands?” asked Peggy, looking at her indigo nails.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Everybody does it this way?”

  “No, ma’am. Nobody does it this way. There’s machines could seed this section here before noon, but this is how we used to do it and just about the only way four people can be part of things.”

  “I’m ready,” said Rachel, holding open her scratchy burlap. “Fill ’er up.”

  A few minutes later, Mr. Kramer t
old us to spread out. We made a ragged line, throwing seeds every which way. Down on one end, Mr. Kramer walked as easily as a sailor, his right arm moving as smoothly as any MC’s introducing star after star. Peggy, beside him, picked up the rhythm first, then Sully, Rachel, and me. We began to work more or less together and the grain went out from us, long scallops in the air, falling without a sound.

  It was pretty in a way; Mr. Kramer so smooth and professional; Peggy grinning, her skirt rocking like a bell in a gale; Rachel intent, biting her lower lip, trying to do it right; Sully and me horsing around, throwing handfuls of seed at each other, then pretending to be blinded.

  “Look!” Rachel shouted, pointing behind her like someone in a sci-fi movie who has just spotted the nine-foot grasshoppers. We whirled to see — birds. They were having breakfast at our expense.

  “What do we do?”

  “Nuke ’em,” said Sully.

  “Send out for cats,” Peggy suggested.

  “I’d say drop a little extra seed.” I glanced at Mr. Kramer, who had just gone on without us, his hand passing through the air in front of him almost jauntily, like someone coming in the door and sailing his hat toward the couch.

  We worked that way all morning, and it was hard. At half past ten or so, Peggy staggered over to Rachel and presently they announced they were going to buy lunch for us all. Sully hung in a little longer, then dropped out as we turned again near the cars. Mr. Kramer and I closed ranks and kept up the pace. It was hypnotic in a way: the scrunch of grain in my bare hand, the cool, clean feel of it in my palm where everything else was hot and gritty, the whoosh of the throw, the look of it in the sun flashing like rice at a wedding party.

  Every time I worked out there, driving the tractor, cutting back grass along the fence row, hoeing at the weeds that seemed to come up overnight, I just didn’t think — not about school, not about the future, not about my mom. Working, I thought just about what I was doing. Or even better, I thought about nothing, my mind as clean and white as the plate I set out for my dinner at night.

  Still, I was glad to see Peggy and Rachel come back. And I may as well admit it: I expected Mr. Kramer to pat me on the back and say what a good job I’d done. Instead, he just took the sling off my shoulder and threw it in the back of the truck.

  “Are we finished?” I asked.