Darnay Road

by Diane Munier

  Will you forget me? If you write me I will no you don’t forget me. Once I get to Shoehorn I will be back in the field come summer. But in the winter we have choors to. It’s a little town and we haul wood and sell that, me and my drunk as skunk oncles. I didn’t no I could write this much. This is the most I ever did write. I hope it’s not so bad you are thinking you can’t read it.

  I am forever your friend and I hope you are not to sad.’ I guess I love you even but don’t tell. Maybe burn this. Thanks for all of the things. I want to give you something so here.’

  Beneath the writing is a heart drawn evenly with an arrow through its middle. It’s really good, with shading and all.

  Then his name—Easy.

  PS – Look in the corner.

  Abigail gets on her feet first and hops up and down and looks at the corner but she knows to let me go first.

  I can see the corners we sit between are empty so I hurry to the far wall and I see the small package wrapped in newspaper and I get it and Abigail squeals and I tear the paper off and it is a little pink transistor radio and a square battery.

  I have wanted one of these forever and ever and now I have one and it’s from Easy.

  All this time. If it wasn’t for Abigail May being here I don’t know how long I would have waited to come back down here. I tell her that.

  “It’s like a miracle,” she says. She asks if she can put the battery in and I let her do that while I reread the letter aloud this time mostly so I can hear it myself. I know I will read it over and over until I have it memorized.

  He tells me to write but there’s no address.

  “You could just put his name and his town,” Abigail May says.

  But I don’t know. I don’t know anything but how much I love Easy.

  Part 2: 1967

  Darnay Road 44

  I am reading over Tim’s shoulder in Bloody Heart’s cramped high school office belonging to the student newspaper, “The Quill.” Timothy, the one that used to chase Abigail May and I home from grade school, wants to be a sports writer. We have an eight page rag, four of which is advertising. That leaves four cramped pages for six reporters. Our chief editor Sister Margaret Martha says we have to have a healthy variety of articles. So she has given each of us titles. I am the political reporter which means I can interview the same three people over and over about upcoming student council decisions.

  I have worked with Sister on a new idea. What about politics that have to do with the United States of America? I have asked. Especially about Vietnam.

  “No Vietnam,” she says right off. “There are plenty of other issues,” she says, “like should the church use mimes or puppet shows for its holiday and special feast day celebrations like the church is doing in London?”

  Sister is getting very old. She is looking at me with great sincerity. It is the same quality Granma finds in my eyes. I hope, hope I don’t look as sappy as Sister does now.

  “We…we have a religion reporter,” I remind Sister. She is the yellow block and I am lilac, possibly my new least favorite color.

  We are all blocks of different colors, together building a fine student paper. That’s what Sister said at the beginning of our freshman year. That’s what got me on “The Quill,” as opposed to, say, dance committee. I was hoping I could use my writing skills to break down some of the current issues for our student body. I was hoping I could write on, “The Quill,” not just for my school, but for my country.

  Sister had to think about it. But after pretty much nagging she gave-in, allowing me to write one article about Vietnam with the understanding that she must first proof it and see if it fit the ‘flavor’ of, “The Quill.”

  God has spared me from mimes and puppets but the article may prove to be a greater fire.

  Like I said, it’s a small office. Tim is mooning over me all the time. I don’t want him for a boyfriend. I had that one lapse of judgment in grade school and he’s never gotten over it. Now I’m fourteen years old and way, way smarter. I’m tired of him approaching me every time there’s a slow dance at our freshmen sock hops. He’s sweaty and I can hear him breathe and after we dance I smell just like his Hai Karate cologne, his own personal sweat cocktail.

  I seem to attract these A students who are so timid in class they don’t understand I’m just being kind because I feel shy too sometimes and I’m wondering what they think about something so I might start up a conversation like we should if we care about others. That doesn’t mean it’s time to come off the walls at every sock-hop and make a B-line for me every time some great brain requests, “My Girl.” I love, love the Temptations but man that song has made my life very, very complicated.

  Whatever I’m looking for it is not in Bloody Heart’s stable of fine Catholic boys. I’ve watched them through all of their stages and even though we are now blended with others who have come to Bloody Heart for high school, I am not ever interested in any of them as more than fellow human beings.

  Or how about this--me asking a boy if he thinks Vietnam is critical to the security of saving the United States of America from the ravages of Communism is not a coded message for rub my boobs please.

  Not so for Abigail. No one is rubbing those polka dots because we are not like that, and far as I know except for a couple of girls who went to public grade school and transferred into Bloody Heart for high school, and still tease their hair like greasers, people are not rubbing things very much. But I do not understand why Abigail May must fall in love after every Friday night at the show or every school game/dance/English class/lunch period. It’s like love, for Abigail May is a Scutter Road pot-hole you fall into because you are not watching where you’re going.

  Abigail is having lots of fun in high school. I want that too. But I’m trying to figure things out but I can’t move as quickly as she does and inside I’m serious.

  Not to put down Abigail May at all. But I don’t fit in with jocks either. I don’t even want to. It feels to me like I’d have to lose something—myself--to do that, the very person I’m trying to find! That’s why I gave up cheerleading after eighth grade. I thought Abigail would too. But she’s very good at it. So I can see why she made the team.

  But I don’t appreciate them—the jocks. That’s all I can say. I admire some of their skill, like in basketball. You can’t be a proper Catholic and not like basketball. But other than that I don’t understand jocks mostly. They are so happy with each other they don’t even notice the other students. What they don’t know, many of us are really, really happy not to be noticed. By them.

  I just want friends. People that are kind. Not some jock inviting me to ‘wear my check-out suit’ to someone’s party who has the house to themselves because their newly divorced mom works nightshift and they are willing to risk their very home just so they can get in with the popular kids. That’s Jennifer.

  It is not luminous—allowing people to use you. It’s like you’ve hit your sell-out price and it’s…a nickel.

  When that boy told me to wear my check out suit it was in front of Abigail May. Abigail May told Ricky and he hit that boy and I told him to never ever hit any boy because of me, and I was mad at Abigail for telling and she promised to never ever tell him anything else again.

  Now after saying all that, what do you think, my first boy who is a friend is a football player my same age from another grade school who has now come to Bloody Heart. He is a really nice boy from a great big family. What I am looking for is someone who can at least talk to you without saying mean or disgusting things or acting like they are the best thing ever. And if they read books that’s the best because they can tell you about their books and you can tell them about yours and it’s like you read all theirs too even if you haven’t.

  Like Aunt May is reading an amazing book called, The Arrogance of Power, by Senator Fullbright. Now I would probably never even try to read that book, but Aunt May tells me so much about it I feel like I am reading it. And guess what, she leaves it on the co
ffee table and I open the cover and it’s inscribed, “To May from Anthony. Forever yours.”

  Forever hers? Not even Father Anthony? Well he did leave the priesthood so he can only be a father in the usual way now. I wonder if Abigail has seen this, but even as I close it I know I won’t tell. I know what loneliness feels like. I know what it’s like to love someone you can’t have and maybe…you added so much to it, you made them up. They become more of a lingering feeling and less of a real person, so private, so deep-in you can’t even share it with your best friend—what you feel. And you start to lock things away and you become private. So private.

  So I meet Dennis, my football playing friend at school and he is very nice. He is funny. I like that a lot because he makes me laugh in class and we seem to be in a lot of the same classes.

  Abigail May and I like him the best and we eat lunch with him and he says he is not very good on the team.

  So we don’t care at all. He cannot even play and that’s fine with me. But he does play and he says he is always getting dragged around the field. We laugh at that. He tells me all these funny stories of what he goes through and I go to the games to watch him.

  Then one day he makes a great play in an important game. Everyone is talking about it and talking about him. He may get pulled up to play on B-team with the sophomores. That’s pretty great for just a freshman.

  But Abigail and I worry he will get a big head. We wonder if he will still be our friend, and guess what. He is just as nice as ever at school on Monday.

  But Abigail May and I don’t pal around every minute in freshman year. She cheers football, then she cheers basketball. It’s a lot of cheering, and I am busy with my work on the paper and student council meetings, then I get in Junior Achievement and it’s one project after another.

  We didn’t know it would be that way when we signed up for all of this stuff. I’m just a kid trying to listen and figure out how to make this world a better place like John Kennedy said, then Martin Luther King Junior, then Bobby Kennedy. My heroes. I’ve taken something from each—from John Kennedy, courage. From Robert Kennedy love, justice, compassion. From Dr. King the understanding that peace does not come without the willingness to step into the right kind of conflict.

  I don’t just take anyone’s word for something because they wear a suit, or a tie-dye T-shirt, or a habit, or a uniform, or a dress. I’ve been handed a world that is tarnished, so tarnished I can’t see myself in its reflection. And yet I stand, cloth in hand to find a spot I can shine. In.

  Music…thank God for music. The same songs carry us, cradle us like mothers might and I’m guessing here. The same songs make us think and call to our hearts and minds, even when we enter the ring from different corners.

  I am thinking all of this…all the time. But in back of it all there is the private thing. Easy.

  “There’s a soldier here for you,” Tim says that Friday afternoon when we’re all crammed in the office trying to lay out the stories we have labored over.

  I am working at the light-table and I look up at Tim. How can he tell me this? How can he say ‘soldier’ to me?

  “For me?” I say.

  I try to think. I drag the scarf out of my hair. I’d had it folded, wearing it for a headband to help hold my long heavy hair out of my face while I work.

  I don’t wear make-up. I’ve tried…just…too much trouble, and too little results to justify the trouble. There is no reason to look in the mirror. I look older…than ten. But not as old as I’d suddenly like to look.

  I am rambling in my head.

  “He’s…well who do you think he is?” Tim asks me.

  “Who does he say he is?” I ask.

  “Just a soldier,” he says.

  I can hear him saying that.

  But I can’t leave this room. I can’t even think. We can’t have visitors during school time.

  And just then the bell rings signaling the end of the day, the end of school for the week.

  The halls are suddenly flooded with students. It hits me that I should gather all my stuff and go, so I do that, walk in a circle and try to think about how to pack up. I fumble to clear the desk and make a neat stack of books and papers. Then I fill my arms and leave the room, ignoring Tim’s last remark, “You’ll see.”

  I follow the rest of the salmon upstream and veer off for my locker. I have to try and remember my combination and it takes three tries before I get it right and lift the lever and it clicks open.

  Then I’m barely able to figure out which books I need to take home and which I can leave in the locker. I do my best. Then I know. What am I doing wasting time. It must be. It has to be.

  I walk quickly then, push through, my eyes looking and looking. He’s at the exit. I see him, in spite of the uniform. I see him, and I am not going fast or slow, or in my body so much as my head. Just my head floating above it all as I move, I move toward him. And a thousand things.

  First, it’s him. He takes off the hat and his head is shaved. His face toward me, his body, so filled out and standing tall and different from the ones going past, in a singular league and I feel his curiosity and attention so sharp, and the students so curious, not daring to say anything.

  He has a dignity. He’s older. I know the color, the greens make my heart ache in-between its speeding thumps. He makes my heart ache. I am eager and shy. Confused and so clear. Wanting and dreading…what I want.

  He’ll break my heart now. It was always coming. He didn’t write like he said he would. Four times in four years. I didn’t write much either. It was too heavy for paper, too hard to contain…in words.

  He stained me with permanent ink. Inside.

  I get closer, so close, and kids hang around to see. I register this but it doesn’t matter. I rise above self-consciousness. I’m just me, for a minute, not tripping myself up, not standing in my way.

  “Easy,” I say. I walk up to him, all the way up. I drop my books, my bag.

  He steps forward and lifts me off my feet.

  I make a sound, a sob, just one and I stop it. My eyes open then and kids take a look and start to move off. It’s too real to ridicule. It’s too real.

  He is strong and he smells like clean and starch and Easy. I close my eyes and just feel.

  Easy.

  Darnay Road 45

  Easy sets me down and I can’t look at him. I’ve been flying, and now I land kind of hard. It’s all I can do not to jump back in his arms. But I don’t do that. I have never thrown myself on someone who wasn’t Abigail May or my Granma. Except for Easy. Just him.

  I know their eyes are on us—students still straggling about to catch rides or hurry to practice, but Easy’s eyes are the ones that matter most. He’s looking at me, and I see it plain. He’s real glad to see me.

  I go to my books, squat there, try to keep my legs together so I don’t flash him my underwear, push that whole horrible thought aside, and start to stack everything again. He’s right there helping me, putting one thing on top of the other, his hands, still twice as big, strong. He’s real. He takes the stack and stands.

  I can barely get my bag. I struggle to get that on my shoulder cause I’m awkward now, all thumbs, and I’m looking at him and then away while I untwist the strap and he watches me with that half a smile and eyes so green, green. It makes me smile, too. He’s…older but he’s young. And handsome. I was right. Even at ten…I was right about Easy.

  He takes my bag, slips it off my arm and works it onto his own shoulder and smiles at me.

  I can’t believe he’s here. A soldier and he’s real.

  I pull up my knee socks. “I have to tell my bus driver Fred I have a ride home. But…you don’t have a car, do you?”

  “I don’t,” he says, loudest on ‘I.’

  “I can ask Fred if you can get on…with me,” I say.

  “I ain’t getting on that,” he laughs. His voice is still kind, still deep. Full.

  I wouldn’t get on without him.

  �
��Well you have a better idea?” I say cause it’s a good jaunt home. He knows that. We could go with Ricky and Abigail but they will both be at practice for another hour.

  He says he’s got us a ride. He shifts my books to one arm and holds out his hand like I should take it and of course I do, in front of everybody and I will follow him just like the song Little Peggy March sang.

  We don’t speak, and mostly I just feel how tightly he holds my hand. I even sneak a look at it, our hands together like all those years back. We’ve practically arrived at a big rumbling truck that I’ve never seen or heard in our lot before, but I know it all right. Disbro Peak? That’s his ride.

  “Oh not him,” I say soft. I never even speak to Disbro anymore, well not since he’s never on the street, just riding that dumb rumbling truck up and down Darnay Road so fast it makes the picture on our new colored television set do cartwheels. And he’s not alone. Sitting in the passenger’s seat is another. Dr. Kildare. But not hardly.

  “He don’t bite,” Easy says. He pulls me around to the passenger’s door and lets go of my hand and lifts my bag and sets it in the bed, and sets my books back there too. But the passenger opens the door and hops out, long hair, tall and skinny and pretty cute all right. Old jeans and t-shirt, jacket doesn’t look nearly warm enough. Beaucap Caghan.

  “Hi Georgia,” Cap says and he’s grinning and he’s just…likeable. I think of Abigail May when she gets a load of this one. Heaven help us.

  I tell Cap hi and we do a loose hug, or we pantomime one. It’s embarrassing.

  I hardly know where I’m going to fit in that awful truck. I’m trying to look like I don’t have a care, but it’s too much. “I…,” I say, but that sentence is doomed by a lump of self-consciousness that sticks in my throat.