“It’s all very interesting.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty interesting.”
“That’s a beautiful moon, isn’t it,” says Phoebe.
“Sure is.” Wesley slips over toward her. He’s not used to being on the passenger side. It feels awkward like this. Backwards. What can I talk about? What can I talk about?
“Sometimes,” says Wesley, “when Vernon’s sort of by hisself, doing something quiet, he’s got this low hum. I’ve heard him do it twice. It sounds almost like a wolf howling far, far off. Then you realize it’s him. He does it on every breath. It sounds like this.” Wesley makes an owl-like sound, but with his mouth closed. “It’s lonesome. I didn’t know what it was. He was cleaning off some bricks. I looked around before I finally realized it was him.”
Phoebe is wondering whether to rest her hands on the steering wheel or in her lap.
“I think he’s had a hard life,” says Wesley. “We had the first Project Promise meeting and went over the names of the masonry tools and all. He catches on pretty fast but there are these blank spaces you come to every once in a while. He’s one of the least of these my brethren.”
“That’s in the Bible.”
“I know.” Got to stay away from the Bible this time, thinks Wesley. And my pisser.
This is wonderful, thinks Phoebe. Hard to believe. A boy talking about the Bible while we’re parking. He seems to be staying away from all that about his . . . member.
I need to get onto some pretty things, soft things, thinks Wesley. “That really is a pretty moon, ain’t it?”
“Sure is.” Phoebe puts one hand on the steering wheel, one in her lap. But that still doesn’t feel right. She would feel better on the passenger side. “When does Project Promise start up?” she asks.
“It’s already started.” Wesley rubs the back of his neck. “Looks like little diamonds on the water, don’t it?”
Phoebe puts both hands in her lap. “Yes, it does look like little diamonds.”
Well. Well this is it, thinks Wesley. Kiss time. He turns to face Phoebe, leans over toward her. She doesn’t move. He slowly moves his head in front of hers. In the pupils of her eyes he sees tiny moon reflections. She’s looking at the water. He moves on toward her face. Contact. She smells so good. Her lips are closed but there is absolutely no resistance. He closes his eyes, and starts his hand to her far side, but while he thinks he’s still got a ways to go before touching her, he’s touching her—a silky blouse. Then he starts his other hand behind her—she shifts forward to give him room. She is a big woman, Wesley thinks. And she is kissing back. Ah, and turning toward him. A hand on his side. Pulling him to her. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Ah ha, this might move right along.
Then she draws back, pushes him away a little.
“Wesley, I enjoy our time together, and, and it’s important to me that you like me the way I am. I just wanted to tell you that.”
“Well, I do like you the way you are,” says Wesley. “I sure do. It’s not like you’re fat either, you know, because everything is in the right proportion—you know?” Wesley sees the freckles on her cheek in the moonlight, thinks about freckles in all those other places, especially down there on the inside of her thighs.
“Well, thanks. I guess. But at least I am doing something about the, you know, extra weight.” She takes a deep breath. “This really is nice out here.”
“It sure is. It sure is.”
Phoebe, in order to take three pieces of popcorn from her bag, which is on the dashboard, leans forward. Wesley, with both arms around her, moves forward with her, then back with her.
She can’t start eating now, thinks Wesley. “Phoebe?”
“Yes?”
“We need to change places.”
“Change places? Why?”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a great game. It’s called ‘army.’ What happens is I give a order and you follow it.”
“Wesley . . .”
“Just try it. It’s fun.”
“Wesley, I—”
“What I’m going to do is slip over this way a little bit.” Wesley slips toward the passenger door away from Phoebe. “And I want you to slide over in the middle here. Go ahead. . . . It’s okay. I’m not going to bite you.”
Phoebe moves over toward the middle of the car.
“Now, that’s right. Now all I’ve got to do is just sort of get over the top of you onto the other side. I can kind of pretend I’ve been driving.”
“Wesley!” Phoebe, with Wesley sitting up on her lap, starts to slip back over toward the steering wheel.
“ATTENTION!”
Phoebe stops. Her feet are on the hump in the middle of the floorboard. “Wesley!”
“Quiet, soldier.”
“Wesley, you’re hurting my—”
Wesley’s legs are caught between the dashboard and Phoebe’s legs. He gets them loose and slides down off Phoebe to a spot almost behind the steering wheel. “Now,” he says. “Now we can relax a little. Whew. That won’t as easy as I thought it’d be.”
“You were just kidding about pretending to drive, weren’t you?”
“Well, I . . . yes.” She is very close now.
“Wesley, listen, I just need to be careful. You know what I mean. My mother and I had talks about this, about how it was going to be when some boy tried to talk me into something, and I promised her I’d remain pure. I mean that’s just the way it is with me and I think you ought to know.”
“Phoebe, what do you think I’ve got in mind? I’m not just some boy. I’m a Christian. You know that. I’m just talking about relaxing a little bit.”
“I just—I don’t know. I just needed to say that. I always try to say that.”
“You mean there’ve been others?”
“Wesley. Of course. I mean not in the way you’re making it sound. Oh, Wesley.” Phoebe lowers her head onto his shoulder. She feels some kind of melting. He’s really cute—in his own sort of mysterious way.
Wesley puts his arm around her up on the back of the seat and turns some to face her. His problem is that they’re leaning the wrong way, toward the driver’s door. He was planning on their leaning toward the passenger door, so he could get more or less on top, but here they are, headed toward—he looks down and sees cleavage, in the moonlight. Her perfume is so, so full of sex, so sultry—it’s pulling him to her.
“Oh Wesley.” Phoebe closes her eyes, meets Wesley’s lips. She feels very relaxed, opens her lips just a little.
Wesley tastes a popcorn taste. He can tell she’s relaxed—OH HAPPY DAY, OH GREAT GLORY, WONDERFUL MUSIC—so relaxed that her weight is falling upon him, forcing him back toward the steering wheel, where he doesn’t want to be, but perhaps. . . . He closes his eyes. His shoulder . . .
RRRROOOOOOONNNNNKKKKK!
Phoebe jumps back. She moves very fast for a big woman.
But Wesley goes right after her, and manages to end up sort of on top, sort of at the side, almost where he wanted to be to start with. He doesn’t want this kiss to stop. He knows this kiss is the beginning of the beginning of the world. He tries to find her mouth again with his, lands on her chin. He moves it on up, and they seem to be back where they were. His left hand begins to awaken to life. As if with a brain of its own, it heads to a spot below Phoebe’s knee and starts moving up slowly. The kiss is going very well. With his hand he’ll move on up between her legs and settle in at a spot just above her knees, see what happens.
But at her knees the skin is all bunched and pressed together. So the hand burrows like a mole toward home, and Phoebe suddenly scrambles backwards, away from Wesley. Moving back as if in waves.
Everything has shifted somehow, Wesley realizes. Feelings too. He straightens his collar, tries to think about David in the Bible. Should he say something about David?
“Wesley!” What in the world is wrong with him? Phoebe asks herself. Why can’t he just kiss a little bit and let that be it, for heaven’s sake. He’ll try to have me in be
d within the week and I’ll be pregnant within the month just like Mama warned if I don’t put my foot down. Solidly. “Wesley, I think we’d better go.”
“Phoebe, I . . . it . . . it was my hand’s fault.”
“Wesley. I’m sorry, Wesley.”
A dull ache settles in Wesley’s chest as he watches Phoebe turn her back, open the passenger door, manage to get out, wade around the front of the car to the driver’s side. He slips back over to the passenger side. Phoebe opens the driver’s door, gets in. There is a coldness in her movements. She puts the key in the ignition and starts the car. The headlights come on. The panel lights seem to Wesley to be a very sad green. Phoebe drives across the parking lot toward the highway, slows not quite to a stop at the stop sign, turns onto the blacktop country road and heads for home.
Wesley stares out the passenger window, watches dark houses go by. He sees lights in windows dimmed by shades and curtains. People are doing all sorts of things in there, he thinks. He decides he should have told Phoebe the truth before things got out of hand. He should have told her he loved her. I’ll behave differently next time, he thinks. I do love her. We’ll have a little talk. That will be the proper thing to do. I’ll remember that I’m a Christian in every way.
When they pull into the Nutrition House parking lot, Phoebe turns off the ignition, looks at Wesley. “I’m going on in now. I’d rather you not call me for a while.” I must send the correct signal, she thinks. I can’t let him think I am what I’m not. She starts getting out of the car.
Wesley gets out, stands by the passenger door, watches as Phoebe walks toward the back door. The porch light is on. “Good night,” he calls.
She doesn’t slow down or turn her head. “Good night, Wesley.”
Wesley watches her, aches to see her face turn toward him, studies her rear end—two big, very smooth pillows under her dress, moving all around side by side. He watches her open the screen door, and with some effort get up the two steps and onto the porch. Up and in.
That’s one group of a woman, thinks Wesley. Man, she is in the world. What now? He walks down and across the street. Dear God, please forgive me if I have done the wrong thing. Help me understand the way Thou would’st have me behave. Help me study to make myself approved in Thy sight. Amen.
He walks across the empty lot beside the Nutrition House, thinks about walking to the Sunrise Auto Shop. Naw, not tonight. Vernon would get on his nerves, asking about everything. He walks on to BOTA House, in the door, past YOU WILL EARN TOMORROW WITH WHAT YOU LEARN TODAY, Up the Stairs and to his room, where he finds a pamphlet stuck in the crack of the door. It’s from the university. The title is “How the Free Enterprise System Exposes the Dangers and Immorality of Unions.” Wesley tosses it in the trash can. What is a union, anyway? he wonders.
Before supper the next evening, Wesley is sitting on his bed playing his National Steel. His instruction book is open beside him. The sound is sweet through his ears and through his chest, like honey, with lemon juice added, just a bit, so that it’s not heavy, doesn’t get sticky. The sound doesn’t get tiring. He has been practicing for almost three hours. The green glass bottleneck feels natural on the ring finger of his left hand. He is precise with its placement on the strings, exactly over the fret. He has learned several steady blues bass riffs, which he plays with his thumb. Then he moves up high on the neck to play a solo break with the bottleneck doing the fretting, his thumb keeping the bass line going.
He practices the riffs over and over and over. When he gets a riff just right, he stands with the Dobro strapped around his neck and walks from the bed over to the mirror. He turns so that the late evening sun through the window flashes off the Dobro. He watches his left hand work, watches the clear green bottleneck making vibrato on a solo break.
Back on his bed he plays a few bars, practices, replays, practices, building until he’s got a whole solo break. He’s learning to stress off-beats, move around the beat, and the sound from the bottleneck against the steel strings is like cool water on something hot—it keeps feeling good. Patterns and formations in his mind break up and reassemble into others, blend, work in ways he couldn’t have dreamed. One little pattern will work in all chords of a verse or bridge. He loves to keep the pattern, the riff, going, while the chords—the structure underneath— are changing. He loves this Dobro, which takes him through doors into rooms of precious sound.
After he’s tired of practicing, he gets a yellow legal pad and a pencil from his bedside table. He has decided to do the proper thing, and has already written all but the last verse of a song for Phoebe. He will use his talents in the name of love. He’s got a good start for the last verse.
I know you feel mad, I know you’re feeling sad.
There ain’t nothing I can do,
but sit right here and get blue too.
I could make it about what I want to happen, thinks Wesley.
I’d be so nice, if you’d call me right now,
and talk about the weather
telling me whether
you still love me like before—that you do.
Wish you were here, at my front door right now
to ring my doorbell—
Ben comes in.
“Ben, listen to this.”
Ben sits down on his bed, listens as Wesley sings through what he has written.
“You need some more words in there at the last,” says Ben. “Ring my blank-blank doorbell. See what I mean?”
Wesley sings. “Ring my dusty . . . ring my dirty, dusty— rusty, rusty, yeah, ring my rusty doorbell . . .”
“Now get something about, like, ‘smell’ in there, man,” says Ben. Like close enough for me to smell you. You know?”
“Yeah, that’ll work.”
“Love song, huh?”
“Well, yeah. For Phoebe.”
They work on the song for awhile and get it right. “Let’s record it,” says Wesley.
Ben starts playing the tape that’s already in the recorder —Wesley playing bottleneck with back-up on bass. “Who’s that playing bass?” says Ben.
“That Vernon—the one I’m teaching in Project Promise. He’s some kind of music genius. I brought him up here to see if he could play bass. He could play everything I showed him. I’d show it to him twice and he’d have it. You heard him play some piano downstairs.”
“Yeah. Pretty good.”
“I was thinking about him playing some keyboard with the band, then I figured we might do some stuff with me on bottleneck and you on lead, and we—”
“Larry ain’t going to want nobody else in the band. Especially no retard.”
“Well, let’s just see. Here, let’s record this.”
They record Wesley’s song to Phoebe, then Wesley writes a note to go with it, asking her to let him know if she would like to go with him to the Project Promise banquet next Tuesday night. He pauses, thinks. He needs to make the letter better. He thinks about Song of Solomon, wonders if he could work in some of that. He gets out his Bible, reads for a minute.
“I’m hungry,” says Ben.
“Wait a minute.”
Dear Phoebe, here’s something else.
Love is as strong as death,
Passion cruel as the grave;
it blazes up like a blazing fire
fiercer than any flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
No flood can sweep it away,
If a man were to offer for love
the whole wealth of his house
it would be utterly scorned.
There. He reads it to himself, then reads in Solomon for something to add. A clincher. Ah.
You are stately as a palm-tree,
and your breasts are the clusters of dates.
I will climb up into the palm to grasp its fronds.
“I got to go over and put this in her mailbox,” says Wesley. “I ain’t supposed to call her or nothing—until she calls me.”
“Why not?”
&n
bsp; “We had this misunderstanding.”
“She told you not to call her or nothing?”
“Call her, see her, anything, until she calls me.”
“Hey. She got you by the balls, man.” Ben stands up, walks over and looks out the window.
“Naw, I wouldn’t say that.”
“She telling you what to do.”
“She’s telling me what not to do.”
“Don’t make no difference—it mean the same thing. She got you by the balls. What’d you do to her, man?”
“I didn’t do nothing. It was what I tried to do.
“Which was?”
“Just kind of, you know, get to know her a little better.”
“Ha!” Ben looks around the room, then back at Wesley. “You mean you tried to nuck her.”
“Naw, man. Look. I been through all that. I mean I done that. I been through that. With other girls. All you got to do is just do it. It’s too easy. But, listen, you know . . . see, there’s a proper way to go through all this. See, you know, I had a pretty big thing happen to me four, five years ago.”
Ben picks up his pic, pics his hair, looks in the mirror, pats his hair down.
“But it’s not like you’re thinking,” says Wesley.
“Hell, that’s all right. All my aunts and uncles are Christian. I told you.” Ben puts down his pic. “They go to church and everything.”
“I ain’t talking about church. I’m talking about man-woman stuff.”
“I got to go eat, man.”
“I’ll go with you. I want to tell you about some of this.”
Headed outside, Ben reads the new quote of the week out loud: “THE FAMILY ALTAR ALTERS THE FAMILY.” Then he says, “Now, that’s something I was wondering about. What the hell’s a family altar?”
“Some kind of vase, I think.”
They sign out, walk on outside into dusk, down the street toward The Columbia Grill. On the way Wesley leaves Phoebe’s tape and note across the street in the mailbox on the front porch of the Nutrition House. Walking down the sidewalk again, he tells Ben a story.
“See, I was in the YMRC, and I’m sitting out at the picnic table one Sunday afternoon trying to find a hole in the fence, you know, when a lot of people are visiting, families and stuff, and I see this old lady at the gate. Just this old lady with a black purse and this other stuff. So the guard lets her in and she starts coming straight at me like she knew who I was, and I look all around to figure who it is she really wants, but she keeps walking straight at me and right up to me and stops and says, “Wesley?,” and it freaked me out, man, so I figured she must be my grandma because I got one somewhere. So I asked her for a cigarette because I was out and needed one bad and she hopped all over me, told me I ought to quit smoking and everything. What was good was she had this ice tea in a jar and the best pound cake you ever eat, plus a piece of this apple pie with this real light crispy crust and this cinnamon flavor, and it was the beginning of me being a Christian. She was sort of mean but at the same time she took care of you like you was her own. I mean she cut my hair, and I got my first tub bath at her place. You ever had a tub bath?”
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