The Outhouse Gang

by Neil Plakcy

  “Have I ever said no to you, once in twenty-three years?” Chuck asked. “Of course, with everybody in this family going to college, I’ll just be left in the dust at the hardware store. You’ll probably meet some handsome professor and run off and leave me.”

  “Not until I have a master’s degree, at least.”

  Chuck looked alarmed until he saw the gleam in her eye. “Well, while you’re still a wife and mother, can I have some more coffee?”

  * * *

  By the first of June the lumber yard was closed and Susanna and Helene were laid off. Susanna and Lisa registered together for an English literature course in the summer session at the community college, along with Helene Lord, who, although she already had a degree, thought it would do her good to get away from people who spent all day talking about two-by-fours. “Don’t tell people I’m your mother,” Susanna said as she and Lisa prepared to leave the house on the first night. “Maybe they’ll think I’m your older sister.”

  Chuck smirked, and Lisa said, “Much older sister, Mom.”

  “Well, you know how they are on the TV,” Susanna said. “All those boys are always saying, ‘Oh, Mrs. Smith, I thought you were Judy.’” They walked out the kitchen door to the driveway, into the early evening twilight, over Lisa’s laughter.

  Chuck puttered around in the kitchen for a while. He wasn’t accustomed to being home alone. There’d always been Susanna, or at least one of the kids. Now he didn’t know what to do.

  He cleaned up his tool bench in the basement for a few minutes, then strayed to the den, where there was nothing good on television. He tried to sit down with some catalogs, but he was too restless. Finally he picked up the phone and called Sandy Lord.

  Sandy had just gotten home from work, to find Helene gone and both the kids out at friends. “I was just thinking of going into town for a burger,” Sandy said. “You want to join me?”

  “I ate,” Chuck said. “But I guess I could drink a beer.”

  “Let me twist your arm. I’ll meet you at the Ferry Tavern in ten minutes.”

  The Ferry Tavern was an old Colonial-style building fallen on hard times. A placard on the side wall said that inns had stood on that spot continuously since 1779, but, with the strip of fast food restaurants and fern bars out along the highway, the Tavern’s clientele had deteriorated. A few years before there had been a nasty incident when a customer had shot the bartender, though he had not appeared to bear any grudge against the other customers.

  When Chuck and Sandy arrived, there were a few reprobate old rummies at the bar and a collection of partying teenagers and unsuspecting tourists in the dining room. Someone was playing Jefferson Starship on the jukebox.

  The beer was served in frosted mugs and the sandwiches were surrounded by fries and nestled in plastic baskets. “At least you got a meal,” Sandy said, taking a break between mouthfuls. “I got a note telling me there were TV dinners in the freezer.”

  “Well, Helene’s got a new job, hasn’t she?”

  Sandy nodded. “At the Ford dealer out on the highway. She likes it, and if we ever want a new Ford she gets a discount.”

  “Susanna’s working part-time at the florist. She works out in back, in the greenhouse. She’s always liked plants.”

  “So what do you think about all this?” Sandy asked.

  “You mean her going back to school?” He shrugged. “She was always the smart one. Me, I’m good with my hands, and I can talk to people. You know, sell.” He shook his head. “It seems kind of useless, at our age, but if it’s what she wants.…”

  “You’re younger than I am,” Sandy said, laughing. “You’ve still got half your life ahead of you.”

  “You know, it doesn’t seem that way,” Chuck said. “I mean, one day, I was just a kid, working in my Dad’s store. Then suddenly my kids are grown and in college. What else is there for me to do except wait for grandchildren and look for cemetery plots?”

  Sandy finished the last of his French fries and they ordered another round of beers. “Do something different. Get out of your rut. Take up sky-diving, or jogging, or something. Keep up with Susanna. Your shoes are not cemented to the floor of that hardware store, you know.”

  “Forget it. I’m stuck where I am.” He raised the fresh frosted mug to his lips.

  But on the way home, he was thinking about what Sandy had said. What if Susanna met a lot of new people at college who made her old life look dull and dismal? Was he just an old stick in the mud?

  He was still moping around when Susanna and Lisa came in. “They were all so young,” Susanna said, taking off her jacket. “Everyone knew I was Lisa’s mother right away. I think this was a mistake.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of quitting after only one class,” Chuck said. “At least give it a semester.”

  “We have so much homework,” Susanna complained. “A whole novel to read for next week.” She held the book up for Chuck to see.

  “Remember how I used to help you with your homework when we were in high school?” Chuck patted the seat next to him on the sofa. Susanna came over and sat next to him.

  He put his arm around her and she nestled into his side. “As I recall we never got much homework done,” Susanna said.

  “You can read while I’m at work.” Chuck leaned his head down next to his wife’s. “Remember we were always worried your parents were going to come in and find us?”

  Lisa walked into the living room. “Can’t you do that in your own room? I mean, I might have friends over or something.”

  Chuck and Susanna burst into laughter. Lisa stalked into the kitchen. “She’ll be gone soon,” Chuck said, holding Susanna close.

  * * *

  Stewart’s Crossing was part of a consolidated school district in Lower Bucks County. Elementary school students could attend one of two schools within the town limits, but had to go to larger schools farther away for junior high and high school. Pennsbury High was a windowless modern concrete block fortress painted white, located three exits down the highway from Stewart’s Crossing.

  Graduation ceremonies were held at the football field adjacent to the high school on an early summer afternoon in June. Chuck Ritter had left the hardware store in the hands of his assistant manager, put on a suit that felt stiff in the collar and crotch, and come downstairs to find Susanna and Bruce waiting for him.

  Susanna wore a pale green dress and had a flowered scarf wrapped around her neck and pinned to her shoulder with a gold circle pin that Chuck had given her as a 15th anniversary present.

  Bruce had come home for a visit. He was living in upstate New York, where one of his Army buddies had gotten him a job selling copiers, typewriters and other office machinery for a local firm. He was working on an associate’s degree in business administration at the community college there.

  Bruce seemed to have inherited his father’s knack for selling, but he was determined not to lock himself behind a counter twelve hours a day.

  The parking lot was already crowded by the time the Ritters arrived at the high school. Chuck pulled Susanna’s little Toyota onto a grassy strip between parking places. As they were walking to the stadium, they ran into Paul and Elaine Warren, whose son Dennis was graduating that day too. And somewhere ahead of them, towering over the crowd, Chuck could see Nick Miller, whose son Fred was also graduating. Somehow the ritual seemed that much more ominous, because so many of his friends’ children were going through it at the same time.

  Fred and Lisa were both going to the main campus of Penn State in the fall, while Dennis Warner, who was one of the better students in his class, was going to Columbia.

  It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and by the time they reached their seats in the bleachers, Chuck was already tugging at his collar and feeling uncomfortable in his suit. However, he felt his heart stir as the marching band began to play “Pomp and Circumstance” and the graduates, somber in their black gowns, tassels in the school colors of black and orange hung from their m
ortarboards, began to parade from the auditorium across the playing fields to the stadium, two by two.

  Chuck trained his field glasses on them, scanning the faces to find Lisa’s. “It’s alphabetical, Dad, remember?” Bruce said. “The Rs are still inside the auditorium.”

  The parade seemed to go on forever, and it was nearly half an hour before the graduates were arrayed on folding chairs on the field itself, facing their parents and guests, who sat on the side of the stadium that faced east.

  As the principal, the superintendent and the valedictorian all gave their speeches, the sun sank gradually over the parents’ heads and the moon rose in the eastern sky over the new graduates. It was an enormous school, nearly 1200 students in each class, and the parents had to sit through while every student from Anna Abbott to Kathryn Zigmund was called to the podium to shake hands with the assembled dignitaries and receive their diplomas, encased in a small black holder of imitation leather.

  When they began to call the Rs up to receive their diplomas, Chuck walked down to the field level with his camera so that he could memorialize the moment when his baby daughter became a high school graduate.

  After the last graduate received her degree, there was a brief benediction by a local minister. Then without warning the field was full of teenagers whooping and hollering and tossing their mortarboards into the air. They all rushed in one headlong mass toward the gates of the field, as if they had had so much of high school that they could not bear it for another moment. Their parents, friends and relatives followed at a more sedate pace.

  The Ritters had arranged to meet Lisa at the bus dock at the rear of the school. Chuck had a special surprise in store; he planned to take the whole family out to dinner to celebrate. He mentioned that to Susanna and Bruce as they walked toward the bus dock.

  “I don’t know, Dad,” Bruce said. “I heard there’s a lot of parties tonight. I have a feeling Lisa wants to go to one of those.”

  “It’s an important event,” Chuck said. “It deserves a celebration.”

  “I’m not arguing with that, Dad. We’ll see what Lisa wants to do.”

  It was painfully clear, once they found Lisa, that she wanted nothing more to do with them. She wanted only to go off with her friends to a round of celebratory parties. Under her robe, Lisa had been wearing a skin-tight black dress of some kind of clingy fabric, a skirt that twirled and a bodice that was slit down between her breasts almost to her navel. Chuck gasped when he saw her. Where was his little girl? And who was this beautiful young woman?

  Lisa took her big brother off with her, leaving Chuck to take Susanna’s hand and walk her back to where they’d left the car. “You don’t have to look so glum, Chuck,” Susanna said. “She’s not going anywhere until September, and even then she’ll only be four hours away.”

  “Our kids are grown up. They don’t need us any more.”

  Susanna laughed. “Are you kidding? Bruce drove six hours to bring me his dirty laundry. And Lisa may look like a woman, but she’s still a baby about so many things. They may not need us as much as they did when they were small, but they still need us.” She squeezed his hand.

  * * *

  When October rolled onto the calendar, Chuck went through his usual ritual of drumming up the guys in the Outhouse Gang for one more foray. Paul Warner grumbled about his back, and Nick Miller tried to say he was too busy, but Chuck wasn’t accepting excuses. Sandy Lord came with Danny, and Charley Woodruff brought his twelve-year-old, Raymond, and his ten-year-old, Jeffrey, and complained that it was all he could do to get out of the house without bringing his youngest boy, too.

  It was a smaller group than in past years, just the seven men and three sons. Chuck saw it as a sign of growing old. The Outhouse Gang was turning into a geezer’s club, something Chuck had never intended, long ago when it all started.

  Even the truck was showing its age. It wasn’t the same one the Gang had begun with, but it still had five years and a hundred thousand miles behind it, and it took Chuck a couple of times to get it started. And as usual, they had to go farther and farther from town to find an outhouse. “Next year we’ll be in the Poconos,” Paul Warner grumbled when they all piled out of the truck on the street in front of the farm. “Might as well bring our wives and rent us a bunch of rooms with heart-shaped bathtubs.”

  “Complainers will be shot,” Chuck said.

  It was more trouble than organizing the spring planting sale at the hardware store. No one wanted to cooperate any more; they were all just going through the motions. It was a great relief to Chuck to get the thing loaded onto the truck and then get rid of it. Fittingly, they chose to leave it in front of the senior citizens’ center on Ferry Street.

  It was the first time they were spotted. A group of elderly men and women came out on the porch of the center as the Gang was setting up the outhouse. They were all wearing Halloween masks over their pajamas. There were three skeletons, two witches, a Frankenstein monster and one green mask that looked like a cabbage. Jeffrey Woodruff waved at them, and the old people waved back.

  “Would you like some cookies?” an old lady warbled.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Charley said, taking Jeffrey’s hand and pulling him toward the truck. “Happy Halloween.”

  The elderly people all chorused “Happy Halloween!” They stood on the porch waving as Chuck pulled the pickup off down the street. When he looked in his rear view mirror, they’d started to come off the porch to examine the outhouse, as if it had been brought to them by a mysterious spaceship. “Happy Halloween,” Chuck said, under his breath. “Happy fucking Halloween.”

  Tom: 1976

  Tom Laroquette’s car was in the shop the day he had his interview in New York, so Jenny had to drive him to the train station in Trenton and then pick him up late that afternoon. The job was a good one, a big step up the ladder, managing the marketing department for a national chemical company with headquarters in Manhattan.

  Tom had been working for a smaller chemical manufacturer in a town about ten miles from Stewart’s Crossing since he graduated from college. He had worked his way up from an intern in the marketing department to product manager for two of the company’s lines of chemical fertilizers. He had an office with a window and a parking space with his name on it, and was vested in the pension plan.

  But the company was slow and old-fashioned, and Tom was eager for new challenges. This opportunity had come out of the blue, through an old colleague who had left for the Big Apple several years before. “I think they liked me,” Tom said, getting into the car in front of the station. “I think it went really well.”

  “That’s nice.” Jenny eased the car out of the line and into traffic. It was raining lightly and the streets were slick with oil and rainwater.

  “You know, if I get this job, it’ll mean a lot more money,” Tom said. “We can get a new car. Maybe even take a big vacation.”

  There was no response from Jenny. “Aren’t you even the least bit interested?”

  “This is a busy time for me. You know we’re running a hard primary.”

  Jenny was the campaign manager for the state senator who represented their district. When he wasn’t running for reelection, she ran his local office, raised money, and dealt with the requests and complaints of local residents. More and more over the last few years, since they had lost their baby daughter to leukemia, Tom had found Jenny getting swallowed up in her work.

  He could hardly complain; he had done much the same. After Betsy’s death, he had started to spend long hours at the office, doing extra work, demonstrating his diligence. He was sure his last two promotions were related to that extra work.

  “Let’s go out to dinner tonight,” Tom said. “To celebrate.”

  “There’s nothing to celebrate. Besides, you promised to help Andrew with his social studies project tonight.” Andrew’s class was studying American immigration that year, and he had to build a diorama displaying the contributions of Portuguese-America
ns. He was having a hard time. He had found a U.S. Senator, a college president, and a colony of fisherman in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and that was about it. Tom had promised to help him flesh the project out.

  “Why don’t we have some Portuguese food for dinner sometime?” Tom asked. “Do you know anything about Portuguese food?”

  “Why is it always me?” Jenny asked.

  They drove the rest of the way home in silence.

  Tom knew that his marriage was falling apart. It was as if, in losing Betsy, they had lost some vital glue that kept them together. As Jenny pulled up in the driveway of their house, Tom had a brief fantasy of leaving her and Andrew behind, of moving into a penthouse in Manhattan, drinking cocktails while staring at the shimmering skyline.

  Andrew was waiting at the door for them. “I got another note.” He handed it to his father.

  “Can I at least put my briefcase down?” Tom asked. “Christ.” He dropped the briefcase on the hall table and opened up the note. Like so many others, this one complained of Andrew’s behavior in class. He had a short attention span and was constantly disruptive.

  This time, however, the note went farther. It informed Andrew’s parents that if he could not control his behavior he would be removed from the classroom and sent to a special education program. “Special education!” Tom said. “Isn’t that for retards?”

  “Let me see that.” Jenny took the note from Tom.

  “Do you know how much trouble you’re causing?” Tom asked. “Your mother is very busy at work, I’m interviewing for a new job and trying to keep up with things at the office. We don’t have time for this kind of nonsense.”

  “We’ll have to go in and see the teacher,” Jenny said. “If they put him in a special ed class he’ll never learn anything. You can kiss college good-bye.”

  “I need a drink.” Tom walked toward the liquor cabinet in the living room.

  “Make me one, too,” Jenny said.

  That night Tom was too angry at Andrew to spend any time on his project. “We’ll work on it over the weekend. If you can manage to stay out of trouble until then.”