Ghosts of Tom Joad

by Peter Van Buren

  The long pauses were filled with TV noise. Mom usually hated having it on when people were over, but I think this night she let it go on purpose.

  “Uh, I heard about Earl,” Stan said, testing the waters with Dad. “He feelin’ any better?”

  Dad looked at Mom, who really looked back at Dad.

  “Yeah. He’ll be good as before by tomorrow. Ain’t really hurt bad at all.”

  “He gonna be able to get back to practice soon?”

  Mom stepped in between their conversation. “Doctor said no. He said Earl shouldn’t risk gettin’ hurt again. He’s done this year.”

  “Boy taking it hard, I suspect?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, the card table is all set up,” I could hear Mom say. There were card shuffling noises, and it sounded like they were playing more or less quietly for a while. She and Dad were partners at the table and usually enjoyed this. I was kinda rooting for Mom.

  “Excuse me for a second, gotta take a leak,” Dad said, and I heard him walk to the toilet room. The small talk once he was gone boosted Mom’s spirits a little, I could tell, just by listening to her. She talked one way around Dad, choosing words slowly, like she was thinking more than she was doing now with just friends. She was happy and even suggested they switch up, with her and Stan playing partners across the table while Lori waited for Dad to come back.

  After the toilet door closed and he came back, that all quiet time lasted only a little while longer until I heard Dad make that sound, sucking in air, like he did when he was starting to get up a head of steam over something.

  “What’s the matter?” Dad said.

  “Nothing.” Stan was buying time, sorting out that fight-or-flight question.

  “No, you acted like something was wrong. What is it?” He was challenging now. Mom knew this sound, too much beer mixed with something acid-like that was always waiting inside him.

  “Ray, please,” she said.

  “What’s eating you Stan?” It was like a summer storm gathering. It was gonna rain, just not sure exactly when, but soon enough that you started heading for the car.

  “Ain’t nothing eating me. I just didn’t like how Sissy played that last card, that’s all.”

  “No, wait a minute. You can’t act rude, ’specially to my wife. She’s your partner here, mister, in my house.”

  “Ray, c’mon, let’s just play cards.” Mom tried to head it off, but the first rain drops were hitting the ground, big and heavy, puffing up the dust.

  “I don’t have people over to be insulting to my wife.”

  “I didn’t insult nobody,” Stan said.

  “Stan, why don’t you let it go?” Lori was pleading now, talking to Stan but chances were she was looking at Mom while she said it.

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, honey. I just think—”

  “Lori, maybe we should serve the cake now.” Mom trying one more diversion. Cake sometimes worked.

  “Maybe we don’t want none of your cake,” Stan snapped, and that was it. The clouds opened and the rain started not sweet, but with purpose.

  “You watch how you’re talkin’,” Dad said to Stan.

  “You don’t tell me what to do neither.” Stan stood up. Thunder crack.

  “C’mon Stan, maybe we should get on home. It’s getting late.”

  “Yeah, maybe it is,” snapped Dad.

  Just 9:30. I had a clock you could see in the dark.

  “Thanks for the snacks Sissy,” said Lori. Her voice changed to a whisper. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Aw Stan—Lori. Now can’t you stay just a few more minutes? I’ve got some nice cake.”

  “We should get going,” said Lori. “I’ll call you.”

  That screen door shut hard. TV was back to too loud.

  “Where’re you going with that cake, Sissy?”

  “I’m bringing it up to Earl to see if he wants any. Ain’t nobody eatin’ it down here. Can’t go to waste.”

  I hated when they fought and I wanted nothing to do with it. I knew Mom was upset, but I did not want any cake.

  “What?”

  “I brought you a piece of cake.”

  “No thanks. I still gotta stay in shape, in case I can go back to practice.”

  “Well, I’ll just leave it on the nightstand. Did you see? Your dad had me looking in the garage for things to sell off at another yard sale, and I found a box of your old blocks, from when you was little. I brought them up with me in case you wanna see them.”

  I remembered those blocks. They were one of my favorite toys, even as I got older. Made of wood, all the edges were worn round from being handled over and over. I built forts and firehouses, even what I thought was a pretty good replica of the factory once out of them. I’d build something and then call Mom to look. She’d be all smiling, trying to guess what it was so’s not to hurt my feelings. As I got older, I figured out that game and would just tell her, “It’s a spaceship.”

  I was reaching for the box, you know, just to see, not that I wanted to play with them anymore, when Mom said:

  “We might be able to figure something out, you know.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “About college and all.”

  “Ain’t no scholarship coming.” I pointed at my ankle with the cake fork. I’d decided to have just a little taste after all. I knew I wasn’t going back.

  “I know that. I was thinking about something else, for you, honey.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know, a loan or something.”

  “My grades ain’t good enough for that.”

  “I ain’t talking about grades. I’m talking about me and your father helping you out somehow.”

  “Dad can’t do it and you know it.”

  There was a pause. Seems when I think back on it, words meant more then.

  “Well, maybe I will.”

  She moved to hug me.

  “Mom, you’re gonna knock over the blocks.”

  “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry. Is that what you want? ’cause if you want to go to school, your daddy and I—”

  “I don’t know, alright?”

  “You were just sayin’—”

  “I said I don’t know. Are you gonna stay here all night?”

  She looked hard at me. Maybe she thought I meant was she gonna run out on Dad. Words again.

  “No, no, I gotta do some things in the kitchen. How’s your ankle?”

  “It’s okay. Can you get me something to drink?”

  “Yeah, sure. Earl, honey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You wanna keep the door closed if you’re gonna have the TV on. Your Dad’s a little cranky tonight.”

  I heard her walk quietly down the stairs, one of the saddest sounds that house could make. My old man was snoring, and it just got louder as Mom shut off the TV. I heard the chain pull on the light, but no more steps. She must’ve stood there in the dark a long time, listening to my old man snore, thinking, I don’t know what.

  Man, did I get out of that house the next afternoon. It looked like rain, one of those Ohio summer storms that old people always say makes the air feel “close” as they build up over the afternoon. Didn’t matter to me. We had Muley’s brother’s car, a great metallic purple boat of a ’75 Pontiac Bonneville with bench seats front and back. The beast had maybe one of the last steering wheel spinners in Ohio. I guess in the 50’s and 60’s everyone had one of these, but now they were rare. A little smaller than a hockey puck, the thing bolted on to the wheel, and you could hold it in your palm and steer with one hand. The other hand was free for your girlfriend’s shoulder.

  It was August, we had some money, and the radio worked.

  Muley beeped the horn at Tim’s father, who was cutting the grass. Mr. Matlock shut off his lawn mower and walked over to the car. He was the cool dad for us all, maybe not Tim, but the rest of us thought he probably let Tim d
rink beer sometimes at home and we knew he didn’t hide his Playboys.

  “Tim! Your friends are here! You boys up to no good again, I assume? How’s that ankle, Earl? I heard all about you gettin’ hurt. You lookin’ forward to getting back to practice?”

  “Doctor says I’m done for the season.”

  “Aw hell, Earl, that’s too bad. What’re you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe watch practice, maybe help out Coach or something.”

  Tim hit the back seat, Mr. Matlock returned to his lawn, and Muley spun up backing out too fast. We drove twice past Rich’s house honking the horn. But he was grounded for trying to steal from his dad’s liquor cabinet.

  “My dad told me all about your ankle. Shit, is Coach gonna be in a mood on Monday,” said Tim over sound of the radio.

  “I figured I’d walk over to practice and watch or something.”

  “Uh huh, cool, Earl. Hey are we still gonna get that case of beer? I got five bucks from my old man. You guys in?”

  “Who’s gonna get it?”

  “Why don’t we go to the Convenient Mart? If Mike’s sister is working, we can get it for sure, like 99 times out of a hundred.”

  Parked the car, engine ticking in the heat. The three of us looked back at that metal beast, squinting to imagine three girls sitting on the big hood with enough room still left next to them to park a whole other car. But first was the beer. Mike’s sister would never check for an ID if her boss wasn’t around, so Tim went in with our money in ones and change. Mike’s sister would cover you too, if you were a little short. We drove around some, drinking that warm beer. I remember my ankle hurt, how the thunderheads were building up to the west, how we had to hold the beer bottles down below the windows whenever we passed someone, how the radio sounded, how the asphalt smelled like summertime. Back then you waited for moments like this, but for that one second in time, I’d be happy to wait just as long again. Say what you want about small towns with nothing to do. But even though we never talked about anything more than girls and beer and what was on the radio, I thought at that moment I would hand over anything else I owned for another chance at doing that with those guys.

  “Hey, shut up you guys.” Muley brought us back to attention. It had just started to rain, weren’t no regular soft summer rain, something that felt meaner, fat drops, making dust into mud on the windshield as we all turned at once like in a movie to see two girls run under the Dairy Queen awning to escape the downpour. Beer was good like syrup to us, but the promise of a teenage girl was magic.

  “You know those two?”

  “The one used to babysit with my sister sometimes,” said Tim. “Muley, drive up there and offer them a ride.”

  “Yeah, c’mon, Muley.”

  “I ain’t gonna do it. I don’t even know them.”

  “C’mon, don’t be a baby.”

  “I don’t even know them. You ask them, Tim.”

  “Alright. Lemme in front.” I went over the front bench seat into the back so Tim could move up.

  Muley slowly glided that old Pontiac up to them girls. They saw us coming, probably from yesterday, but played it cool like girls were always better at than boys.

  “Hey Cindy,” said Tim.

  “How you doing?”

  “I’m fine. You need a ride somewhere?” Tim got held back in fourth grade and was older. He knew this kinda stuff.

  “Who’re you with in there?”

  “This is my friend, um, Tom, and that’s Earl. Where’re you going?”

  Since Tim was older, he knew not to call Muley by his nickname in front of girls and so called him Tom like his mom did.

  “Where are you going?” Tim kept after them. “C’mon, it’s rainin’ and we got beer.” They climbed in. Having a case of Stroh’s, a decent car and some friends was like being James Bond in Reeve.

  “What happened to your leg?” It was the cute one, pointing to my ankle. I guess I’d been rubbing it without thinking.

  “Um, I hurt it during football practice.”

  Tim cut in. “Earl used to be on the Reeve team with me until he got hurt. Where do you two go to school?”

  “Madison. We’re just over here looking for something to do. Cindy’s mom thinks we’re babysitting.” Not a bad start …

  I caught Cindy checking her hair in the side view mirror. Okay…

  She looked quickly toward her girlfriend. Maybe?

  “You all got any more beer?” said Cindy.

  Bingo.

  “Ladies, keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times ’cause it may get a little bumpy!”

  This time the three of us boys went into the store together to get more beer. The two girls waiting in the car, using the rearview to smudge their makeup or something. Blue eye shadow was the thing that year. Tim and Rich ran in to the store first ’cause of the rain, while I got pretty wet moving as slow as I did with my ankle messed up. I was walking toward the back where they kept the beer when I overheard them.

  “Shit, Tim. We got two girls waiting out there. Think we’ll get home base tonight?”

  “I don’t know—sure as hell not with three of us around. We gotta ditch Earl.”

  “I feel bad, leavin’ him in the rain and—”

  “Yeah, I feel bad too, but you wanna get some tonight or what? C’mon, don’t be a sissy.”

  They ran towards the front of the store with the twelve-packs of beer under their arms like footballs, threw money at Mike’s sister behind the register and were back to the car with the urgency that only seventeen-year-old boys surfing waves of seventeen-year-old boy hormones and a lot of beer drunk too quickly could produce.

  Dripping wet and with a long walk home in the rain, I counted my steps to the front door, barely said “Hi” to Mike’s sister on the way out and, a little light-headed still from the beer I’d drunk earlier, started out across the parking lot, not giving much of a fuck about much.

  IT WAS MOM here on the bus. She said to me:

  That day was one of those days when it seemed as soon as I got the lunch dishes put away it was time for dinner.

  “You worried about Earl?” I asked your dad. “About him losing his scholarship?”

  “He never had no scholarship.”

  “You know what I mean, Ray.”

  “He don’t need college. None of us did. Ain’t nothing wrong with working with your hands for a living, maybe joining the service and learning a skill, growing up some like I did in Korea and my old man did in Germany. Traditions don’t get to be traditions by accident, you know Sissy. Hell, it’d do the boy good, make a man outta him finally.”

  I ignored him and attended to cleaning up. I could hear the thunder outside and the lights flickered.

  “Sounds like we’re in for a doozy tonight. Hope the power stays on.”

  “I’m just concerned, Ray.”

  “And you’re sayin’ I’m not?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ nothing about you.”

  “I care just as much about him as you do. But at least I’m not being impractical. Now goddamnit, I’m trying to watch TV, Sissy.”

  There was a long stretch of silence until the next commercial came on. We had to account for these things in our lives during sixty second breaks.

  “I read in ‘Dear Abby’ tonight a letter from a wife whose husband has the same problem as us.”

  “We ain’t got no problem.”

  “We do Ray. Lori said you even told Stan about it outside the Bowl America and that’s why you two was mad at each other.”

  “To Hell with Stan, and to Hell with him again for telling Lori. I told you, we ain’t got no problem.”

  “Dear Abby said in the paper to that lady that her husband should discuss it with their family physician or clergyman.”

  “Is that why you made the meatloaf tonight? To soften me up for this?”

  “Ray—”

  “Well, it didn’t work. It didn’t soften me up for nothing.”

  “I
thought meatloaf was your favorite.”

  “It tasted like shit.”

  “I, well, I didn’t have much time to get it ready. I’m sorry Ray. You know now I have to work all day waitressin’ at that restaurant.”

  “Well maybe that ain’t right neither. I told you before, Sissy. Now Monday you call that restaurant and quit. You tell ’em you’re needed at home, which is true. A man can’t raise his family when his wife’s out all day.”

  “Ray, you know how things are.”

  “I’ve had enough with your working. You are gonna quit that job.”

  “No I ain’t.”

  “How can you expect me to act like a man when you refuse to treat me like one. It ain’t my fault—Stan was right—if you was more of a goddamn wife, I could be more of a husband.”

  “You’re blaming this on me? The fact that you and me ain’t slept like husband and wife for all this time is my fault?”

  “Goddamn right. I’m going to get a beer.”

  “Don’t you go into that kitchen.”

  “What?” Your dad said it like it was the first time he ever said the word out loud.

  “I said, don’t you go into that kitchen. You are gonna sit here and listen to me.”

  “Why—”

  I was nearly hysterical, shouting over the rain and thunder at your dad.

  “You are gonna sit here and goddamn listen to me. I ain’t gonna take no blame, not no more Ray. I ain’t gonna let you scream at me like I was some little girl you screwed after color guard practice. You remember that Ray? I was kneeling on the high school track waitin’ to start marching and you walked up behind me and scared me, holdin’ your hands over my eyes. I stood up and brushed the gravel off my knees, and Mrs. Reardon yelled at you, and you just acted so cool and calm and walked off. I had to take the blame for all that happened later, until your momma and daddy forced you to, but I ain’t gonna take no blame for this. I am a proper wife, goddammit. I done everything I could for you, even wore that awful mail order fancy underwear you made me wear. Said it would help, but it didn’t, and I felt like a whore not no wife. And now you want me to quit work so you can feel like somebody you ain’t no more. I ain’t so stupid that I don’t know. I am livin’ and breathin’ and—”