Call me Jane (The Oshkosh Trilogy)

by Anthea Carson

  “Who waters your plants?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Who waters your plants, Krishna?”

  Krishna shrugged. “I do, I guess. So what did you think of my idea?”

  “What idea, that I’m cool?”

  “Ugh. Get over yourself. What did you think of my idea for a party?” she asked.

  “Oh, that.”

  “We could have it in three weeks. I can’t do it this weekend. I’m going to Minnesota to see my grandparents. And not next either, I think that’s the weekend Ames wants me to go with him to see his friend who’s joining the army. But the week after that?”

  “Yeah, but what about prom? I just heard the Transistors are playing at prom.”

  “I think that’s the following weekend. Anyway, we’ll have everyone vote, and at the end of the night we will know once and for all who’s better. And of course, it will be the Stones,” she said and smiled.

  I went home, and there was now a second note that said Paul called, and this one had his phone number written next to it. I called him back.

  “Can you drive out here to my house?” he asked. He gave me directions. It was a ways out of town, and a pretty drive. It was nice to be out of the city. You had to take Highway 45 to go there, the dangerous highway with the left turns coming out of nowhere.

  “Turn left at the old graveyard at the corner of 45 and Baker’s Road. You’ll see it. It’s got a really tall iron gate around it. I’m just two farmhouses from there, but it’s another five miles.”

  All the way there I kept thinking, should I say anything to him about this? Did he know? Of course he knew. Why wasn’t he doing the right thing? Maybe he wasn’t a good person. Maybe I should confront him. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t know what to do. I really liked him a lot, and I couldn’t wait to see him.

  His cat, it turned out, had just had kittens and he wanted to know if I could take one of them. He showed me the big brown cardboard box where they were playing and cuddling and looking so cute.

  “I like the orange one,” I said.

  I already had a cat at home. Her name was Chuckles. Chuckles was the cat I finally received after about ten years of begging and pleading.

  “No,” my dad kept saying, “it’s a terrible thing to get a cat.”

  “Why?”

  “They die, and when they die it is so painful,” he said.

  But in the end I received the cat, and now I wondered if I could bring home another. I remember Chuckles as a kitten. I played with her; she was so cute, so tiny. She was grey and black and white. That was also when I moved down into that back room that never felt like a room.

  “I like the orange one,” I said.

  Paul picked her up, “This one’s a she,” he said, and put her in my arms.

  “Aww,” I cooed.

  Paul started stroking my hair the same way I stroked the kitten’s fur. We stood next to the counter in his large orange and tan kitchen. His mom came in the room and Paul introduced me to her. She seemed really nice.

  “Come out here with me,” Paul said, “and bring the kitten. What do you want to name it?”

  “Hmm,” I considered. I felt so happy. Then suddenly I thought about the problem, the letter, Lucy.

  I didn’t say anything. We walked out into the yard. He had a great big field to run in. There were cornfields and big trees. I imagined this was a pretty great place to grow up. We sat out on a porch swing that hung inside a gazebo.

  We kissed a little, then we cooed over the kitten together.

  “How about you name her, and I’ll take her home.”

  “How about Sunshine?”

  “Okay, I’ll call her Sunshine.” I smiled up at him. He leaned over and kissed me again, and he kept stroking my hair.

  “You’re so pretty,” he said.

  Should I say something? I felt this huge, compelling desire to blurt out everything. How could you do this to Lucy? Why are you sitting here with me? I should go. Do you know what Glinda thinks of me?

  But I didn’t say anything. Later that night I took Sunshine home in a box. He walked me out to my car and we stood cooing over the kitten by the door, kissing some more, and with the sun setting behind him he looked even more gorgeous than he did normally.

  I drove home in a dreamy state, listening to the Beatles on my tape deck.

  Chuckles hated Sunshine. She hissed whenever Sunshine tried to eat from her bowl. She refused to play with her. I felt so sorry for Sunshine. I petted her and said, “I’m sorry Chuckles is so mean, it just takes a while for her to get used to you.”

  When I comforted Sunshine, Chuckles sat in the corner glaring at me and hissing. I tried for several days to patch things up between them. Paul and I talked about it on the phone. We talked on the phone a lot now, every night. I never mentioned Lucy and the letter. I even managed not to think about it all the time.

  Chuckles finally allowed Sunshine to eat from her bowl, but once that happened it became worse. Chuckles refused to eat at all. She would sit and watch the tiny kitten eat but never eat herself. She was in a real depression. My mom said the obvious. “We have to take the new kitten back. It’s the right thing to do. We can’t betray Chuckles like that, it isn’t right, and she just won’t accept this new kitten.”

  I was so sad. I sat with Paul on his couch petting her and saying good-bye.

  I also knew I would need to let Paul go too, eventually. But not yet.

  TWENTY SEVEN

  It was the scariest movie I’d ever seen. It was called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We all saw it in a drive-in movie theater.

  “Ow,” Ziggy said. “I don’t mind your squeezing me, but that’s a little too hard.”

  “Oh, sorry, I thought you were Paul,” I said.

  “That’s quite alright. You can squeeze, especially if you wanna go lower down.”

  Walt and Gay had all the room in the world in his red convertible next door, but they wouldn’t share even a smidgen of their space with us.

  Just then a couple more teenagers squeezed into the backseat, forcing me completely onto Ziggy’s lap. I couldn’t move back onto Paul’s, because for one thing I was squashed nearly underneath him, and he was turned with his left hip digging into my stomach, grinding me deeper onto Ziggy’s lap, and besides, someone was now sitting on top of him, on the other side of his hip.

  “Ow, move over,” someone said. It sounded like Dave.

  “Who all is in here?”

  It was so crowded, hot, and muffled you could not hear the tinny sound coming from that cheap metal speaker that hung over the partially opened window.

  “Turn up the sound of the movie. Would somebody turn that speaker up?”

  “It won’t go up anymore,” said Krishna.

  “Yes it will, pull it in the car,” Paul suggested.

  Krishna was up in the passenger seat. For once we weren’t in my car, but for the life of me I didn’t know whose car we were in. My car was there at the drive-in too, but it had a bunch of other people in it. Some were sitting on top of the car. Others were wandering around like zombies.

  “Those guys look like Night of the Living Dead,” I said, and pointed out the window. Ziggy looked out there to see what I meant and laughed.

  “They do,” he said. “Maybe someone will take a bite out of you soon,” and he tickled me in the side, causing me to squirm around on his lap.

  “Oh God,” I gasped, “I am so ticklish.”

  “Shocking that you would be ticklish,” he whispered, close to my ear.

  “Hey,” Paul shouted, “are you sure you can’t get that sound to go up anymore?”

  “I tried,” Krishna said. She pulled the speaker into the car and started banging it on the dashboard.

  “You are so drunk, Krishna,” I yelled. “Stop banging that thing, you’ll break it. And this movie is freaking me out.”

  “How can you hear it enough for it to freak you out? Besides, stop freaking out over everything would
you, Janey Lou; just chill the fuck out,” said Krishna.

  “That guy is keeping a pet chicken in a tiny bird cage. That is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said.

  “You mean scarier than the fact that they are cooking people in the back and serving them to the customers?” Ziggy asked with a mocking smile.

  “Yeah, scarier than that.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s so–I can’t explain. It’s worse—”

  “Worse than cooking people?” he asked.

  “Yeah, because—”

  “Hey you two, we can’t hear,” Dave shouted.

  “Well, it would help if Krishna hadn’t broken the speaker,” said Paul.

  “You told her to keep fucking with it,” said Dave.

  This made Krishna burst out laughing. She was just completely drunk. She left of the car, slammed the door, and broke what was left of the speaker. She stumbled over to Walt’s car and demanded drunkenly to be allowed in “to the sanctuary,” as she put it, very loudly.

  “She busts the speaker in here and then demands to be let in over there,” I shouted.

  “Let’s just pull the car over to another speaker. There’s one over there,” said Ziggy.

  There was an empty parking space diagonally from us.

  “There’s one not being used, can it reach over?” asked Paul.

  “Just pull the car over,” Ziggy said.

  “Good idea. Someone do that,” Paul said, and then he put his arm around me and started kissing me and I lost all interest in the movie, in spite of how scary it was. Some one started the car and started trying to move it.

  “Who’s driving?” I said.

  “Hey,” shouted those on top of the car. “Watch it, we’re up here, what are you doing driving?”

  “Don’t worry! I’ll go slow,” shouted the driver out the window.

  “Who is that driving?” I said to Paul between kisses.

  “That’s Tom,” Ziggy answered between Paul’s kisses.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Paul didn’t have his car that night for some reason. I couldn’t imagine why, and I was too drunk to ask him why. I was scared all the way home. For some reason my terror didn’t hit me till I was on the road. I had to drive out past that graveyard.

  “I’m too scared to leave.” I hung onto Paul’s shoulder.

  “You’ll be okay,” he said between kisses.

  “No, I won’t!” I said. “I’m terrified. I can’t leave.”

  “You’ll be fine. Just be brave.”

  I started crying.

  “No, I’m so scared, I can’t go.”

  “You can do it. I know you can do it.”

  He gave me one last kiss and I backed out of the driveway. He stood waving in the driveway in the headlights. The crunch of the gravel under the wheels, and then I backed out onto the main road. Now I couldn’t see him. He must still be standing there in the dark. I was so terrified, I could barely drive, but I knew I had to drive fast. That chicken was too fat and too big for that cage. It couldn’t even move. Who would keep a pet like that? Well, I recalled Ziggy saying, the same people who would cook people and serve them to their customers.

  I pulled forward and turned on the tape real loud to drown out the fear and sang along. “Put pennies on your eyes,” I sang, “if you intend to die. Cause I’m the Taxman,” I passed that graveyard as fast as I could, then sped through a stoplight and then another stoplight onto Highway 45.

  Then I heard the siren and saw the flashing red lights in my rearview mirror.

  “Oh thank God!” I said to the officer.

  “Miss, are you aware that you just drove through two stoplights?”

  “You’re not going to believe this, Officer, but I was too scared to stop at that stoplight.”

  “What?”

  “I just saw the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I was too scared to stop at that stoplight.”

  “Just a minute,” he said and walked back to his car.

  Oh no, he was going to leave me alone.

  He came back with his partner.

  “You’ve got to hear this one,” he said.

  I told him and then he said, “See, I knew you had to hear it for yourself.”

  “Texas Chainsaw Massacre is playing on the other side of town.”

  “I had to drop my boyfriend off. He lives right down there.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Paul Collins.”

  He paused for a moment. I didn’t care what he decided. I almost wished he’d arrest me for something so I didn’t have to drive home alone. But he didn’t.

  “I don’t believe you, but it’s the most creative thing I’ve heard all day.”

  He let me off with a warning.

  TWENTY NINE

  “Why are we going here?” I asked. “Why here? After we just saw that movie? Why?”

  We were on our way home from a party on the farthest edge of the woods, east of Paul’s farm. I was very drunk. Ziggy had said the perfect mix was a fifth of vodka and two beers drank all within the space of one hour.

  “That part is very important,” he said, “the amount of time you take to drink it.”

  He was there that night, smashed in my blue Chevette. Legs were literally sticking out of the windows this time.

  The party had been on a spooky farm. There had been a bonfire.

  I’d been to other bonfires—one at the school for homecoming parade in which everyone made floats—but this bonfire was different. It was beautiful. The flames leaped high into the night. It crackled and popped way up at the top of it. It generated heat clear out to where Gay and I were sitting, about twenty feet or more. We had found a girl with long, tangled, reddish hair. She wore a flannel, red and grey shirt and jeans. She was cool. She was really cool. Gay and I became totally fascinated with her. Mesmerized. In fact, it was as if our mutual infatuation with this girl had bonded Gay and me. We drank, stared, and took turns flattering her.

  “Janis Joplin?” I said like a question, turning to Gay, holding up my cold bottle as if to toast her.

  “Janis Joplin,” Gay’s eyes widened as she nodded, and toasted me back.

  “Could you do something for us?” I asked.

  “What’s that?” she asked. She sat with her knees up and her feet together, knees to the side slightly, supporting elbows and a beer hanging from one hand.

  “Could you just sing ‘Me and Bobbie McGee’?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah!” Gay nodded with me, toasting me again. “Please?” she said.

  “How’s it go?”

  We didn’t care that she didn’t know how it went. We would teach her the lyrics, slow and patient.

  We taught her and then, smiling and nodding, leaned back on our arms. “Busted flat in Baton Rouge...”

  “Busted flat in Baton Rouge?”

  “That’s right, waitin’ for a train, and make your voice crackle a little bit.”

  “Oh she doesn’t even have to try.” Gay frowned over at me, but it was a frown that said, I’m not angry, I just can’t believe we found this girl.

  We sat with her all night, telling her stories, making her laugh, and when it was time to go we were barely aware of the people who grabbed us by our shirt collars and stuffed us into our vehicle.

  I wouldn’t be driving. I don’t know who was, but I damn sure know it wasn’t me, cause after seeing that movie so recently I would never have stopped on the way back to Oshkosh at the abandoned farmhouse we then proceeded toward.

  “Why, why, why?” I said. “Why do we have to go in there?”

  Ziggy reached out and with two fingers smoothed a lock of my hair back. Then he yanked his hand back, startling me.

  “Don’t worry,” Paul reached his arm over me and whispered right next to my cheek. “You won’t be scared. I’ll hold on to you.”

  “We’re not really going in here; we’re not really going in here.”

  “You want to wai
t in the car?” Paul said.

  “No, oh no!” I exclaimed.

  “Wait in the car with her,” Ziggy suggested.

  “I want to see the farmhouse,” said Paul.

  So we went in there, by God, yes we did.

  “How come no one else is scared? Are you all crazy?”

  “Why are you so scared?” Krishna asked.

  “It’s that chicken,” Ziggy said.

  “What chicken?” Krishna asked. “What is he talking about?”

  “There was a chicken in that movie we saw the other night,” said Ziggy.

  “I just know I’m going to see that chicken in that house and it’s going to be in a birdcage!” I said.

  We were partway in the side door now. The outside of the house glowed in the moonlight. We squeezed ourselves through a narrow pathway, scraping ourselves on a scraggly, leafless tree.

  “If I see that chicken I am going to have a heart attack.”

  Paul grabbed me, startling me, and then held me tight around the waist to keep me from bolting.

  “It is actually very dangerous in here,” Krishna observed, from just inside the door.

  Raj had a flashlight.

  “Janey Lou,” Raj called from just behind Krishna. “Guess what I see!”

  Ziggy was right behind me and making bawking sounds.

  Paul held me very close, so I did feel kind of safe, but any minute I was ready to bolt.

  “Oh my God, this place looks just like that movie so far. How can you guys stand this? Am I the only sane one here?”

  “Well, actually,” Raj started. “We were planning to cook you later and serve you to customers, but you’ve been so noisy we may have to off you now.”

  “Hey,” Krishna yelled. She was all the way in the living room.

  “Ow!” Gay shouted. “Goddamn it! What the fuck was that? I just scraped my leg on a nail or something.”

  “Have you had a tetanus shot lately?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but I doubt it. And there are probably rats in here.”

  “Better than chickens,” I said.

  I kept hearing scraping sounds, and whispering and giggling in complete darkness. Every now and then something would fall. I could not see anything, but he shone it right into my eyes at one point, while nobody made a sound. I could only see Raj’s face. He was smiling. His eyes had a sinister twinkle.