Joyce Carol Oates - Broke Heart Blues

by Broke Heart Blues(lit)

  And I have to admit, in that instant I'm scared. My mother, my wife and are in the car possibly observing this incident, I'm not sure, they won't mention it to me and I won't mention it to them. What's Orrie Buhr do but turn and walk away. Not in any hurry, either. His kid that's been waiting and watching is looking scared, too, but proud of his daddy, and the two of them saunter off together. I'm standing there, by my car, shaking. I mean--seriously shaking.

  So flooded with adrenaline it's like an electric current is rushing through me, and already I know I'm going to be exhausted. I wanted to run Buhr and tell him, "Look, normal sane people, adult men, don't behave like this. They don't nurse a grudge for almost fifteen years. Like school was yesterday. Like John Reddy Heart' was yesterday. I'm going to my lawyer, and I'm going to sue you for assault, you son of a bitch." But I was kind of hurt, too. I'd always been John Reddy's friend--I thought--and I'd to be a character witness for him but, God damn, my parents wouldn't let me. My mom was all upset because of the divorce anyway, and my falling apart over John Reddy's mother like he did, so I couldn't upset her any more, but I did feel like shit over it, and maybe, just maybe, Orrie Buhr had a point, which is why I didn't run after him, but mainly, I have to admit, I was scared as hell of the guy. I didn't say a thing, just shut the car trunk and climbed into the car, behind the wheel, hoping nobody noticed.

  line is, I didn't want my nose bloodied like the other time." Faithfully during the long year of his absence we wrote to tohn Heart c/o Tomahawk Island Youth Camp. We sent Christmas cards, cards (John Reddy's birthday was February 8). We sent small gifts complimentary subscriptions to the Weekly Willowsvillian with its of febrile print celebrating our myriad activities and achievements, and to the literary journal Will-o'-the-Wisp devotedly co-edited by Evangeline Fesnacht and Ritchie Eickhorn. Though we seemed to know John Reddy would never respond, still less thank us. His silence did not deter us. His indifference, his probable contempt. For there was a thrill, an actual physical tremor certain of the girls felt, composing diarylike letters of startling intimacy to a boy at Tomahawk Island Youth Camp in the latenight secrecy of our beds, when our parents believed us safely asleep, or, more recklessly, at school. Dear tohn Reddy, I have been so unhappy. I think of you all the time. I think you must be lonely in that terrible place. I am so lonely here! Our faces were bright and fever-struck. Our eyes shone defiantly. None of our friends at other high schools could make such glamorous claims- "Corresponding with a convict! A murderer!" our parents said, disapproving.

  Some, like Mr.. Myers, were angry. Some were worried. We told

  John Reddy was no murderer, how could he be a murderer, hadn't he been acquitted?

  It had been a jury of adult men and women who'd acquitted him, after all.

  That winter there came, out of nowhere, a compulsion to knit more high-strung, nervous and moody girls of the Hill. One of our taught us (" It's better than smoking, it gives you something to with your hands that's useful") and within a week the fad had spread through the high school. Of course, we were in a frenzy to knit things for John Reddy Heart.

  Though few of us had the skill or the patience to finish the scarf we were trying to coax into being, or the gloves, or the sweater, and fewer still would dare to wrap this item and mail it to John Reddy Heart in prison.

  It often seemed that the agitated flashing and clicking of our metallic knitting needles, the repeated "knit, purl"--"knit, purl"--our lips shaped like a mantra, the woolen material perpetually damp from our sweaty hands, had to do with an actual product, an article of clothing, or even John Reddy.

  One day at a rehearsal of Our Town Mr.. Lepage lost patience with his favorite Verrie Myers who, when she wasn't in a scene, snatched up her knitting and began agitatedly to knit, saying, "Veronica, for God's sake! What is that thing you're knitting.7--whoever do you imagine would willingly wear something so ugly?" Verrie, lost in a trance of knitting, woke the sound of laughter, Mr.. Lepage was cruel, but funny. She began to stammer, "I'm-sorry, Mr.. Lepage. I don't know what it is. It began as a sweater, a Scots heather cardigan'--but now"--Verrie stood, shaking out the thing she'd been knitting feverishly for weeks, a misshapen rectangle of mud-green wool that did not immediately suggest an article of clothing--"it's become something I'm doing because I can't stop. My fingers can't stop. I wish I could stop but I can't. I don't know what it is." To our drama coach's astonishment, beautiful Verrie burst into tears.

  It was that evening, Verrie would confide in us, years later, that Mr.. Lepage first "touched" her--just the back of his hand, at first, against her wrist. He'd frowned at her, grave as a physician. He'd taken the sweater from her, noting with a flicker of repugnance that it was damp, and smelled of damp, from her sweaty hands, he'd set the thing aside, positioning the silver knitting needles in such a way that the wouldn't slip loose. He hadn't kissed her then, but he'd framed her face in his hands and regarded her with kindly myopic eyes. Had she known at the time that the man was crazy for her, we wondered, and Verrie said, embarrassed, "Oh, Francis was never what you'd call crazy for me, that's all been exaggerated. ") In the end, Verrie's disgusted father took the "sweater" from her burnt it in the fireplace of their home. What became of the other girls' knitting? At our big thirtieth reunion, at a cookout at the Zwaarts', Janet Moss of all people made us laugh by showing up with a "muffler, I think," she'd been trying to knit for John Reddy, she'd found it in a trunk in her mother's house. The fad for knitting died out abruptly, leaving us exhausted, our poor fingers so strained they could hardly function as fingers.

  It was known that Miss Bird regularly sent reading material to Reddy Heart in prison, purchased from her own modest teacher's salary.

  She'd initiated a remedial reading course for him to take with her by mail, with the approval of the Tomahawk Island warden. She'd never gone to visit him. Perhaps he would not have consented to meet with her. She us, hesitantly, yet with an air of quivering excitement like one betraying an old lover, "John Reddy had difficulty reading. He was probably dyslexic. That would help account for his quick temper, too. But no one knew 'dyslexic' in those days. It was believed that young people so afflicted were 'rebellious, 'uncooperative. Antisocial." An honored guest at our Tug Hill reunion picnics, Miss Bird spoke gravely. "My most tragic pupil. We exchanged glances. The wistful way in which Miss Maxine Bird, in her late sixties, spoke of the long-ago John Reddy Heart suggested she'd been in love with him, too.

  Says tohn Reddy, Come ride with me!

  Says tohn Reddy, Mmmmm baby come ride with me!

  In my Caddie we'll travel the highways and we'll travel the sea tohn Reddy, tohn Reddy Heart.

  In fact when John Reddy Heart at last returned to Willowsville, in November of our senior year, having "maxed out" at Tomahawk Island, we less of him than we'd seen before. He wasn't on any sport team, wasn't assigned to any homeroom. "It's like he's in quarantine or something.

  they think he's gonna poison us." Instead of the acid-green Caddie rubber when John Reddy traveled certain stretches of road, he a beatup Mercury purchased from his employer Mr.. Farolino that was color, as Chet Halloren meanly said, of "barely dried puke." The surprise was, John Reddy's family didn't return to Willowsville with him. We'd expected them all to move back as if nothing had been changed, but our expectation was, as we came to realize, unrealistic.

  "After all he killed a man, right? His mom's lover. You can't just erase that. John Reddy didn't live in the house at 8 Meridian Place which continued to empty but in a rented apartment, rumored to be "pretty sad, just two small rooms" above the North China Take-Out on Water Street.

  Eventually, January of our senior year, the Heart house was sold to a Merrill Lynch executive transferring to Buffalo from Cleveland. The robin'segg-blue front door and trim disappeared as if they had never been, by a tasteful dark green. Much of the lawn was dug up and replaced sod. The executive's wife was swiftly accepted in Willowsville social circles, invited to join the Village Women's League within a month o
f her arrival, polite and well-mannered, she nonetheless expressed "frank exasperation" with the numerous elliptical remarks made to her about the Riggs shooting, the scandal and so forth about which she and her husband had known nothing whatsoever at the time they'd bought the house. )

  It was rumored that the Heart house had been sold to pay John Reddy's legal fees. It was rumored that the Heart family was "scattered.

  " John Reddy worked after school and on Saturdays at Farolino's Carpentry as he'd done before his arrest and imprisonment. He never remained on WHS property beyond 3,20 P. M. when his last class ended.

  He'd been provisionally allowed by the district board of education to return as a special student who would not be participating in sports or activities, he was even exempt from gym class. ("It's like they're trying to keep him from me," Coach McKeever complained bitterly. "Like hasn't been punished enough. ") John Reddy had lost a year and a half of formal schooling but he'd accumulated some credits at Tomahawk Island, the remedial English course with Miss Bird ("He earned a B--he's a worker") so he was enrolled in our senior class. At the age of almost eighteen he seemed older. His features were severe, his skin coarsened.

  There was a scar in his left eyebrow and his left eyelid drooped slightly where, it was said, he'd been injured at the time of his arrest on Mount Nazarene.

  "That eye is so sexy!" Bibi Arhardt shivered. "It's permanently bloodshot like it sees too much. ") John Reddy no longer wore a black leather biker's jacket "They say it was blood-splattered, he'd had to get rid of it while he was a fugitive") but a red plaid wool jacket of the kind worn by the workmen our fathers hired for carpentry or lawn service. His hair was savagely trimmed at the nape of his neck, yet grew long and uneven at the sides and top, starkly black, lank and without lustre as a horse's mane. When quills fell into his face, John Reddy was observed snapping his head roughly back, or brushing at his head with a hand, or both hands, in gestures that seemed to us both brutal beautiful. ("It's like he wants to hurt himself," Pattianne observed. "He's angry. ") At Tomahawk Island, we were told, John Reddy had been and "persecuted." By guards? By guards and fellow prisoners, guys.

  Why? we asked and the boys told us, exchanging cryptic glances another, "Resisting." Resisting what? we asked. Bo Bozer moved shoulders uncomfortably inside his WHS letter jacket, saying, "Just resisting.

  John Reddy's the kind of guy you'd have to kill to make give in." Now he wasn't on the basketball or track teams, now the didn't scream tohn Reddy we're ready! John Reddy we're rea-dy! he was naturally known to fewer people. Even seated beside us in class, hunched over a notebook, or striding through the halls, he seemed to exist on the far side of an abyss. He walked swiftly as before except seemed taller and more intense and few of us would have dared to fall into step beside him to attempt a one-sided conversation. So many girls out, "Hello, John! "--"Good morning, John! "--he seemed often not to heard, though, with a quick forced-smiling courtesy we didn't remember in him before his troubles, he'd glance up, with a nod or an that sounded like

  "H'lo." His former teammates tried to engage him in casual conversation, saying they'd missed him, everybody'd him, things hadn't been the same without him, and John Reddy ducked his head, couldn't tell if he was embarrassed for himself, or for them, and mumbled, "Yeah. Thanks." Dwayne Hewson who'd been feeling, he said, like shit for a long time, for giving in to his old man and not testifying as a witness for John Reddy, said, "We, uh, thought about you a lot.

  Last year.

  We... " His voice trailed off miserably. Bo Bozer said awkwardly, "Yeah, John. We were damned sorry about... you know. All that shit." And Bo Bozer too fell silent. John Reddy was at his locker, turning his in fierce deft spurts until it clicked open. It almost seemed he hadn't heard Dwayne and Bo, lost in his own thoughts, or was going to ignore them, his jaws clenched, his mouth working silently, then he turned, and bared his teeth in a smile, a forced-friendly smile. He seemed to be making it a point, Dwayne thought, to look them in the eye. ("And that one eye of so fucking bloodshot. ") He said, "Yeah. O. K. Thanks. I missed you guys, too." Later, Dwayne told us how he, Bo and a couple of other guys from basketball team just stood there like assholes not knowing what to say next, or whether to say anything, they'd been planning vaguely on asking Reddy to a party that weekend but clearly he didn't want to talk, at least not at the moment, in the school corridor where people passed glancing at him, staring at him when he wasn't aware of them or even when he was, and that hurt the guys' feelings kind of, "Even assholes like us have feelings, y'know? ," so they repeated to John Reddy they were glad he was Let's get together soon O. K. ? and John Reddy nodded already reach into the cluttered interior of his locker, the plaid wool jacket straining across his shoulders and the nape of his neck flushed as if with emotion.

  Dwayne said, "It hit us that John Reddy was an adult, and we were kids. He was humoring us. He was being fucking polite. And him, a guy who'd a man away with a bullet through the skull!" It was Katie Olmsted in her new aluminum-and-chrome wheelchair who'd been the first of us to meet John Reddy Heart when he returned, in mid-November, to WHS. Mrs.. Olmsted had driven Katie to school that morning, as she did days now. When Katie was having a bad day it was important for her to get to school early. For months her M. S. (as Katie called it, casually--"M. S." sounded less terrifying than "multiple sclerosis") hadn't been so severe, she'd had good days when she could walk almost normally, and bad when she needed help getting out of bed, but in the fall of our senior year she'd been pretty sick, and was using a wheelchair much of the time, entering the school "via the cripple ramp at the rear." Katie spoke jocosely of her illness as if daring her friends not to laugh with her. "M. S. ?

  strangely altered her personality. ) It was a fact, most of us who'd been friends with Katie remained friends, girl friends that is, but most boys, boys who'd dated her (Larry Baumgart, Jon Rindfleisch, Ray Gottardi--that bastard) kept an awkward distance. If boys couldn't avoid speaking to Katie they were self-conscious and abashed. We were shocked to hear Katie call out, with her newfound boldness, to a knot of boys in the cafeteria one noon, "Hey guys-I'm not contagious, really! This isn't leprosy." The boys laughed nervously, embarrassed. But quickly slipped away. Verrie Myers said, incensed, "They're assholes. Don't pay any attention to them." Katie said, laughing, "Half the human race is assholes? And I'm not supposed to pay any attention to them?

  That might be difficult." Mrs.. Olmsted had left Katie at the rear entrance of the school just inside the door, at Katie's request. Katie had learned to operate the with a certain flair, determined not to ask for help unless she truly needed it.

  We respected her independence but she tired easily sometimes, a look of fatigue came into her face that was terrible to see but, still, you had to be careful--you had to be tactful. Every one, even teachers, had learned to wait for Katie to ask for help. "So there was this person behind me, he'd come out of Mr.. Stamish's office and I sensed him looking at me, I could almost feel him about to touch me, I mean the back of the chair, and I said, No thanks! I'm fine! before he could do anything or even say anything. O. K. , said. Actually there was a doorway coming up I'd possibly have trouble with, so I looked around to see who it was--and it was him. It was John Reddy Heart." Katie paused, breathing quickly. Her fair, thin skin had heated her eyes, which were ringed with tiredness, were shimng, too. Before M. S. --before John Reddy had been sent away to prison--Katie had been one of us who'd adored him from a safe distance. And she'd had her dream-vision of Reddy after his trial, of which we'd been jealous. She'd written letters to him, intimate diary-letters which possibly she hadn't mailed, and she'd knitted for him, doggedly and devotedly and not without a sense of humor, a gnarly misshapen muffler in the school colors, maroon and gold, which certainly she hadn't sent. She was telling us, breathlessly, the words from her, "It was his first day back. He'd gotten here early, too.

  He has to report to Mr.. Stamish's office every morning at eight-thirty--he isn't assigned a homeroom. Or a
study hall. As if he'd contaminate us! He won't to assemblies, he said. Or pep rallies, or games. Anything 'extracurricular.

  He just wants to get enough credits to graduate next June. They've him a desk' in Miss Crosby's office, he told me, just a table he can use to work at. In shop, where he's learning carpentry, auto repair, drafting, he has a workbench at the back of the room. You sound like a leper, John, just like me, I said. (Yes, I called him John. By now he was pushing me the chair, sort of gliding me along, and it was O. K. It was like magic.

  I could do it perfectly well myself, which of course I can, but was allowing to push me, like a favor between friends. ) Hey, don't say that about yourself, Katie, he said, I'd told him my name quickly so it wouldn't come out he didn't know my name and we'd both be embarrassed--'that's not a good thing say. His voice sounded hurt. It's a low, serious, somber voice like a kid's but a man's. I said, Who cares what's a "good" thing to say, sick I've had enough of "good" things said to me that are ninety phony. I couldn't see John Reddy's face but I sensed he didn't like this, either. We were almost at Miss Bird's room. He'd gone out of his way to push me there, I guess, though that wasn't clear to me at the time.