If Jack's in Love

by Stephen Wetta

  “Those boys giving you a hard time?”

  He sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You heard them.”

  “It was the Pendleton kid, right? Hey, you know what you do next time you see him? Don’t say a word, just walk up and kick him in the balls.”

  I rolled my head over the pillow and looked at him. “That’s dirty fighting.”

  “Fighting’s supposed to be dirty. Fighting’s about winning, fair or foul. I ain’t kidding, don’t say nothing, just knee him in the balls. That’s what Stan would do. You notice anyone picking on Stan?”

  “No one likes Stan.”

  “You can’t control whether people like you or not, but you can sure as hell make ’em respect you.”

  “By kneeing them in the balls?”

  “That’ll make ’em afraid of you. That’s where respect comes from, from people fearing you.”

  I wasn’t sure I bought this. It was the exact opposite of what Mom taught. She taught that respect comes from respecting others. On the other hand, I was plenty respectful to others and in return I received nothing but abuse. So maybe Pop was right.

  Having a man-to-man like this seemed a good time to bring up Gladstein, but somehow the words got stuck in passage. Maybe it was because Pop was being sweet when I needed him to be sweet. He was smiling and massaging my shoulders with his big, competent hands.

  “We should go out and kick some ass together someday. This is the snottiest gang of people around here I ever met.”

  “Why are they like that?”

  “Deep down inside they wanna be like us. I know it from experience. It’s like rich women when they go after the stable boy.”

  “You think so?”

  Pop had a pretty basic way of understanding things. I never wanted to believe life could be as basic as he said it was, and every time it turned out he was right I told myself it was probably for the wrong reason. And now I was telling myself the same thing about Stan, because his thinking was getting to be a lot like Pop’s. Except Stan’s was even more basic.

  “Stop and ask yourself,” Pop went on. “Why do you think the girls out there are always falling for you and your brother?”

  “Like Myra?”

  “Yeah, like Myra. And that Blankenship girl who used to be so crazy about Stan. And look at the way this Anya chick is mooning over him.”

  There might have been something to what he was saying. We Witchers did all right with the women, when you considered how off-limits we’d been deemed by society. Yet it never occurred to me we might be the objects of envy.

  “I really like Myra,” I said. “And I think she likes me too. I mean, I don’t think she sees me as the stable boy.”

  “I wasn’t saying you’re the stable boy.” Pop laughed aloud at the idea. “You’re the smartest Witcher I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Must come from your mother’s genes, ’cause it sure ain’t on my side. But don’t forget you’re a Witcher. The minute you get too big for your britches they’re gonna remind you who you are. We Witchers have to stick together, you got that?”

  “Witchers ain’t snitchers,” I said, and regretted it, because quoting him might give my eavesdropping away. But he just laughed. I guess he figured he had told me himself.

  “That’s what they used to say when I was growing up.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Don’t let the bastards get to you. That’s what they want, they want you to think you’re dirt. I’m telling you, next time you see that Pendleton punk you knee him in the balls, you hear?”

  After that he left the room, worried about what he might be missing on the soaps.

  I lay for the longest time, confused and apprehensive. What was I to do about Gladstein? I wanted to be with him, to hang out at his store. I missed Myra. Hell, I missed Tillie, Basil, Anya. And where the hell was Dickie Pudding? Some friend he turned out to be.

  Maybe I should just forget what I’d heard the night before. It didn’t seem proper to glean such bad intelligence through eavesdropping. The act forfeited the knowledge—perhaps. I lay with that awhile, but it didn’t work any miracles in my soul. All I could think about was Gladstein. It would be disloyal to let him down. Yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to speak with Pop.

  Try harder, I told myself, be a man… .

  And then I heard the squeaking of rusty hinges.

  I leapt to the front window.

  Dashing from the mailbox was Kathy Coghill with my letter in her hand.

  22

  THE EXPECTED birthday reprieve arrived, and Pop made plans to take me to an ice cream parlor across town. Mom and Stan and Anya would be coming along too.

  On the day of the event I headed to Gladstein’s. I’d been longing for him almost as much as for Myra. Guilt over Pop’s intentions was eating away at me, and I hoped that if I offered Gladstein my earnest friendship I might in some way assuage my feelings.

  “Little Witcher!” he shouted when I came in his store, which set his dogs to yapping in the back room.

  “Hi Mr. Gladstein.”

  “Where the heck have you been?”

  “I got grounded for a few days. My parents caught me with Myra in my bedroom.”

  It sounded so adult to be saying such things.

  “And how are things with little Myra? Did you do what I told you?”

  Gladstein had a beam in his eye.

  “Touch her breasts? She wouldn’t let me. I put my hand just above her blouse but she made me take it away.”

  “How large are they?”

  “I don’t think she has much.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t. How old is she?”

  “Twelve,” I said. “Today’s my birthday,” I added.

  He congratulated me heartily and began rooting through his drawers for a present.

  “No, don’t do that. Do you have a burglar alarm?” I asked.

  His head shot up.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Perhaps I’d asked too suddenly.

  “No reason. I’m just wondering what would happen if someone tried to break in here. You have a lot of expensive jewelry and stuff, right?”

  Gladstein glanced about furtively. “Don’t tell anyone, Witcher. There’s an alarm above the door in the back that doesn’t work. Fella I took the lease from told me I should fix it, but I keep putting it off.”

  I popped my knuckles, trying to think of something to say. I’d been hoping a good alarm system would deter Pop so I wouldn’t have to get involved.

  “Do you have a lot of money?” I asked.

  “I’m well-off enough. I could close this place tomorrow, I don’t have to work. Why do you want to know?”

  “You mean you do it for fun?”

  “I need something to do with my time, right? Life is long. You’ll see.”

  He studied me with his lightning-bolt eyebrow, pondering my nervousness. To distract him I took out Myra’s latest note and laid it on the counter. This had been delivered by Kathy the day before.

  It read:

  DJ [I think this stood for “Dear Jack”]:

  Every time I see you I get punished. Everyone tells me you’re wrong for me. I’m grounded until school starts. I still wear your ring at night.

  Love, M

  “She wears the ring!” Gladstein gloated. “I told you, Witcher, there’s magic in that ring. Do you say your incantation?”

  “No sir,” I said.

  I had forgotten all about my syllable.

  “Well, no wonder. If you had been saying your incantation none of these things would’ve happened.” He beetled his brow. “Snead thinks I should be worried because I park my car in Jefferson Ward. Keeps ribbing me about it, white man driving a Lincoln. Do you wanna know why I’m not worried?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m protected.” Gladstein tapped his temple.

  “You mean you say an incantation?”

  He tapped his temple, emphasizing his point. “It’s why I’m not worried a
bout the store. Power, Witcher. It’s up here, the power of the will, the power of the mind. Keep saying your syllable.”

  When I left the shop I was silently chanting my incantation.

  On the way home, still under his influence, I found myself moved so powerfully to do something that I could barely control myself. It was to stroll past the Joyners’ while chanting my syllable. I knew it would be risky, and yet the urge grew stronger with every step I took. I was hoping Myra might pick up my vibrations and appear at a window. Just to wave, just to exchange a glimpse. I didn’t ask for much.

  The minute I turned on her street I sensed something wrong.

  The Joyners’ house was about a hundred yards down, and in front of it a small crowd had gathered. People were milling about a police cruiser. Rusty was among them, barking excitedly.

  Something told me to turn back. A voice in my head (my mother’s) kept warning me I’d find nothing but trouble in that direction.

  I made out a Kellner or two, a number of Joyners, and in the middle of them all, my brother. Everyone was shouting hoarsely, livid and out of control. And I thought, Stan. Who else could unite the neighborhood in such fury? Five or six people beside the cruiser were speaking at once. In the Joyner yard loitered several bystanders, Gaylord, Bruce Pendleton, Mrs. Joyner, who were supplementing accusations made against my brother with commentaries of their own. On the front porch, flanked on either side by maiden Coghills, stood Myra, who flapped her hand like linen on a line as soon as she spotted me; but then she recalled the venerable crowd she was among and turned away, mortified by her lapse in judgment. But so what? I had seen her joy before she could hide it.

  “Oh God, here’s another one of them,” a lady’s voice said.

  It was Mrs. Kellner.

  Stan’s eyes blinked in my direction, too preoccupied to notice me. Then he smugly surveyed his accusers, playing the offended victim and thoroughly enjoying the havoc he had wrought. I knew my brother all too well.

  Reedy was trying to calm everyone down. He had his hands out and he was saying, “All right, one at a time, please.”

  “He’s been going up and down the street all afternoon,” someone hollered, “mocking everyone and acting like a damn fool.”

  “All he wants is trouble,” Gaylord shouted. “He keeps calling me to come out and fight.”

  “I have a right to walk anywhere I want,” my brother said.

  “He’s harassing us,” Mrs. Kellner said. “You should arrest him for harassment.”

  Myra was focused on the action so she’d no longer have to acknowledge my presence. Then Karla Coghill saw me and her eyes went wide. With malicious joy she whispered in Myra’s ear and Myra, with the usual self-possession among her kind, didn’t even bat an eye. I couldn’t help but admire it; I mean, later, in tranquil recollection, when I wasn’t so desperate.

  In the meantime Reedy was trying to gain control of the situation. “Why do you have to walk up and down this particular street?” he asked. “Why can’t you walk somewhere else?”

  “I feel like it, that’s why. This is America, if I wanna walk up and down this street there ain’t a single law on the books says I can’t.”

  “Still, you can’t go around harassing people.”

  “Who’s harassing who? These people are crazy. I ain’t bothering them, they’re harassing me.”

  The entire crowd erupted into catcalls, finger-pointing, fistshaking.

  “They believe you’re menacing them,” Reedy hollered over their voices.

  “I ain’t doing nothing, I’m just walking past their houses.”

  Reedy turned powerlessly to the crowd. What could he do? A guy has a right to walk in his own neighborhood.

  “Sure, he’s acting innocent now, but you should see the way he keeps acting. He makes all these smart-alecky faces at us and then he starts pulling down his pants—”

  “What are you talking about, lady?” Stan shouted. (It was Mrs. Kellner.)

  “It’s true, he does grab his pants,” Gaylord judiciously broke in, eager to speak the truth. “He doesn’t pull them down, he just sort of yanks ’em.”

  My brother shrugged, as if this part of the argument didn’t concern him.

  “Why are you yanking at your pants?” Reedy asked.

  “I ain’t got a belt, I’m hitching ’em up. Is that against the law?”

  The crowd pleaded furiously to refute the lame excuse and Reedy tugged nervously at his fingers. Stan passed a hand over his mouth, concealing a smile.

  And then someone, a lady I’d never laid eyes on, turned a vicious frown in my direction. “Look, there’s his brother!”

  Everyone swung around.

  Reedy seemed relieved to see me on the scene. He wiggled his finger for me to come closer.

  “Why don’t you take your brother on home?”

  “I can’t make him do anything. I just got here, I don’t even know what this is about.”

  I wanted people to understand I’d played no part in my brother’s evil machinations. (He gave me a wink, which I refused to see.)

  “Tell your brother to stay away from us,” Mrs. Kellner said.

  “Miss Kellner, I can’t—”

  “Oh, you’re just a pint-sized version of him. You Witchers are all alike, you’re nothing but trash.”

  In the yard, Gaylord sputtered and turned away. Probably he was laughing because soft-spoken Mrs. Kellner had been brought so low as to shout meaningless insults in public. Even I found it kind of funny. Everyone was amazed at how into it she was. Two or three kids broke out grinning. Yet wasn’t it pathetic that such a pleasant lady would let the antics of a Witcher bring her down?

  Unfortunately, Stan had observed Gaylord’s sputter, and to him there could be only one cause for it: Mrs. Kellner’s insult to his brother. Before Reedy knew what was happening Stan was running towards Gaylord and tackling him to the ground. His fist rose once and came down on Gaylord’s lip. The second time he raised it Reedy clapped a viselike grip around it. In a flash he had Stan upright, with his arm behind his back.

  “All right, let me go!”

  Myra gave me a look and I stared helplessly back. That’s all that occurred between us. There wasn’t any time after that.

  The crowd had pulled away, scared of the violence, and now everyone spoke at once. Myra and Mrs. Joyner were tending to Gaylord’s bloody lip, and suddenly Myra dashed inside the house.

  Reedy, meanwhile, was trying to negotiate a peace between Gaylord and my brother. Gaylord handsomely refused to press charges, which earned him the esteem of the entire crowd and allowed it to draw a contrast between the behavior of Joyners and Witchers.

  “You know I could haul you in for this,” Reedy told Stan. “I can think of three charges right off the top of my head. Give me thirty seconds and I’ll come up with three more. Now get out of here. If you bother these people again I’ll get a court order to restrain you.”

  Stan formed an f with his lips and teeth, but he didn’t say it. He just stalked off, leaving me to struggle with the dilemma of whether to join him.

  It wasn’t as though the neighbors would accept my solidarity, if I even offered it. I knew damn well nothing would cause them to differentiate me from Stan. Besides, I didn’t want to take their side. But I didn’t want to take my brother’s side either, not as long as Myra was around.

  She came running out of the house with the first-aid kit, and as she handed it to her mother her eyes drifted towards mine. I guess she couldn’t help herself. I put earnestness in my expression, devotion, concern, love, heeding, adoration. But not so much as to give her away. And she nodded invisibly. Her eyes flickered before she turned to her injured brother.

  And then I followed my bully brother home.

  23

  NEUMAN’S WAS a blindingly parti-colored ice cream establishment whose regal banquettes made even the tallest and most substantial of our citizens appear puny and trite. There might as well have been a sign at the door, �
�The management requires you to leave your despair outside.” Frosting, frivolity and fluorescence were the essence of the Neuman universe. The nightmare of history had nothing to do with the place.

  Deep inside the cushioned pleats of a corner booth sat Pop, Mom, Stan, Anya and I. Our special guest that day was Tillie, who at the last minute had claimed my birthday as an affair she simply could not miss. In hindsight I suspect she only wanted to check out the Witchers, since there seemed no end in sight to her daughter’s infatuation with Stan. Nevertheless, I was flattered to have earned the enthusiasm of such a magnificent dame.

  She had driven the Fleetwood to Neuman’s, with Stan and Anya making out in the back seat. In the parking lot, where we all met, I discerned a restrained frown on her face while she watched my mother climb out of the Ford. But she brightened up considerably when she saw Pop. There was a spark in her eyes, and I decided I would watch these two closely.

  Sure enough, once we got settled on the banquette and my mother’s face had disappeared behind the elongated menu, the flirting began in earnest.

  “I hear you’re looking for work,” Tillie said.

  “Yes ma’am.” Pop’s chin was on his fist. He was chewing gum, which made his head bob. He gave her one of his crooked grins. “You got something?”

  “You mean work?”

  She giggled.

  I shot a look at Mom, but she was puzzling over Neuman’s encyclopedic list of sundaes.

  “Pop’s a mechanic. Not a grease monkey, a mechanic,” Stan said. This had to do with some private joke between him and Pop, and they guffawed raucously.

  Tillie eyed Stan witheringly and turned to me with a smile. “How about Jackie boy. Thirteen years old!”

  “Yeah, congratulations,” Stan sneered, “your best years are behind you.”

  Anya elbowed him. “Oh stop. And how about little Mary, are you lovebirds still going at it?”

  Mom’s eyes peeked up from the menu.

  “You mean Myra,” I said. “I don’t think we should be talking about her.”

  “You better not be seeing that girl,” Mom said.

  “But she’s such a little darling,” Tillie exclaimed.

  Mom bit her tongue and hid her face behind the menu.

  “The Joyners are crazy,” Stan said. “They sicced Reedy on me just ’cause I was walking past their house. What kind of justice is that? Do we still live in America?”