The Courts of Love

by Ellen Gilchrist

  Now the small bear moved along the side of the brackish creek. The lovely smell was getting closer. He was lost in it. It smelled of ten good things all mixed together. He warmed in the smell. He moved happily along the ground, bringing his stomach with him.

  On the back screened-in porch with the patched and ratty screens and the old painted table with its wobbly legs and the green chairs with the tall backs, Minette and Dell and DuVal feasted on the fried chicken. There was a platter of it on the table. Plus fresh boiled corn and butter and mashed potatoes and the blue and white dish of green peas and carrots. There was also a round loaf of Hawaiian bread, which was Dell’s favorite and Minette’s downfall. Tonight neither of them was paying much attention to the bread. The chicken was hot and crunchy and had been prepared by a combination recipe of the way both their mothers had fried chicken. It was dipped first in egg the way Dell’s mother insisted it be done and then shook up in a brown paper bag with flour and salt the way Minette’s mother did it. The deep hot fat boiling in the thick pan was agreed upon by everyone they knew who knew a thing about frying chicken. The fat was on the back of the stove where DuVal could never reach it. The table was set. The Tucker family was at dinner.

  “I might make him a little baseball diamond,” Dell was saying. “Back where we had that garden last year. It won’t be long, Minette, he’ll be playing T-ball.”

  “He won’t play T-ball for three or four years. You got to quit rushing him into everything. He won’t like it when he gets there.”

  “I wish we could have another one.” Dell looked right at her when he said it.

  “Another what?”

  “Another one. A little boy or a girl. I think all the time what if something happened to him. Where would we be? It’s too big a chance. Only having one.”

  “And how would we live then? On just our salaries? We can’t do it, Dell. We wouldn’t even be able to pay the taxes or for the roof. What if I got sick? What would happen then? I don’t think Momma would take care of two of them. She complains enough as it is.”

  “I only said I wished we could. I didn’t say to do it.” Dell reached for a third piece of chicken. He brandished it before he took a bite. He ate it with lovely manners. He was just a lovely man, Minette thought. But that didn’t mean she was having any babies. A breeze stirred from the south. Beyond the fence the clouds were gathering. A front was coming up from Texas. It would be there by midnight. She helped herself to corn and ate it daintily. He wasn’t the only one who could have manners.

  DuVal was making a dam in his mashed potatoes. He had two sides built up but the melted butter kept dripping out of the other sides. He put his finger in it and sucked it off. “Get down,” he said. “Getting down.” He squirmed down out of the high chair and moved around the table to the door.

  “Let him go,” Dell said. “He’s had enough. He was only playing with his food.”

  “Momma gave him potato chips,” Minette said. “I told her not to, but she does it anyway.”

  DuVal had forgotten about the potato chips. Now he went into the kitchen and retrieved the bag where his mother had put it on the counter and carried it out the kitchen door to the backyard. They watched him going down the stairs carrying the bag. “Let him go,” Dell said. “He looks so cute. What do you say, honey, is he the cutest child that ever lived?”

  “He might be,” she answered. They watched him moving out into the yard, the bag of chips dragging along in his hand.

  The small bear arrived at the stile at precisely the moment that DuVal moved past the circle of toy trucks. The smell was now so overpowering that the bear ran up the steps of the stile and beat on the gate with his paws. When it wouldn’t budge, he climbed around it and fell down the steps into the yard. DuVal froze. He had never seen a bear. He didn’t know a bear from a hole in the ground but something in him knew to scream. The first scream was low-pitched. The second was bloodcurdling. The third was so terrible it stopped the bear in its tracks. By then Minette was out the door. “Oh, God,” she screamed. “It’s the bear. Get the gun.” She ran toward her child. She ran twenty feet in a second. She grabbed him up and started toward the house. Dell was behind her with a 12-gauge shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other. Minette reached the circle of toy trucks. Dell pulled her behind him. He drew a bead on the bear, which had moved toward them across half the yard.

  “Don’t shoot it,” DuVal screamed. Minette had made it to the porch with him now.

  “He hates that noise,” Minette yelled. “Let me get him inside. Then shoot up in the air. It said on TV to shoot up in the air.”

  Dell wavered. The bear had stopped moving. Then, as they watched, he picked up the bag of potato chips and began to devour it. He bit into it, plastic bag and all, and chomped it down in five bites. Then he glanced their way, shook his head, bent over, and began to lick up all the crumbs.

  “Throw him some chicken,” Minette suggested. “Throw him the corn.”

  “Call the police, Minette,” Dell answered. “Get the police on the phone.” He moved back into the porch. He put down the pistol and picked up the plate of chicken and moved it to the end of the table near the door. He took a bite of a wing, then sailed it out over the bear’s head toward the stile. Behind him Minette got the Fort Smith police on the phone.

  Later, after the police had shot the bear with the tranquilizer and the photographers had been there and the television cameras, and Minette’s mother had shown up at just the wrong time, Minette and Dell wrestled DuVal to bed by promising to tape the photos of him on the ten o’clock news and after they did that they got into their four-poster bed and made love two and a half times before they finally fell asleep. It almost tied the record they had the time they went camping by Lee Creek. “Now everyone will know where we live and come and rob us blind,” Minette said, cuddling down into her almost sleeping husband’s arms. She was pretending to be helpless and dumb. “I’m going to be afraid to be alone a minute after this.”

  “No, you won’t,” Dell muttered, trying not to fall right asleep after the article she had made him read in New Woman magazine about women hating you to go to sleep after you made love to them. “You never are afraid of anything.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said, but he was all the way asleep by then. She kept on saying the rest of what she had to say just the same. “I’m afraid of dying and I’m afraid I’ll lose my job and I’m afraid of getting bit by spiders. I’m afraid something might happen to DuVal and I’m afraid you might start liking someone at the plant.” Since he was definitely asleep and the moon was bright outside the open window and they had had such a narrow escape, she decided to let it all hang out. “I’m afraid of getting pregnant and I’m afraid if we wait too long I might never have a daughter. I’m afraid Fort Smith is getting too big or if it gets smaller we might both be out of work. I’m afraid we looked stupid on that television story and everyone will tease me to death tomorrow. I was afraid you’d shoot that little bear. As soon as you aimed at him I was about to cry thinking he’d be all blown up and bloody like people in Bosnia or somewhere. Well, to hell with it. We’re the ones who caught him. If it wasn’t for us he’d still be on the loose. What would you have done if you were me, that’s what I’ll say to them. We had DuVal to protect, for goodness’ sake. To hell with it. What a day.” Minette moved her body back over onto her own side of the bed and went dead to sleep. The moon moved across the sky. So did the earth we’re riding on. Not that anyone notices it anymore what with all that stuff there is to keep up with on television.

  Desecration

  I did not know they were going to paint swastikas on the church. I did not know they were even in the church. I did not know where they were taking me.

  My name is Aurora Harris and I have been an extremely good and reliable person most of my life and in Gifted and Talented since they tested me in second grade. My father is the head of the English department at the university and my mother is a housewife and former painter. I a
m the oldest of two children. My little sister is not in Gifted and Talented because she has no self-esteem, which is not my fault, and doesn’t test well. She is spoiled rotten, to tell the truth, and one reason I ended up on that altar is because my mother is so busy spoiling Annie she never has time for me. All she does is drive Annie around to art classes and acting classes and ballet classes and everything they can think of to develop her potential. Meanwhile, I did not get elected cheerleader and if you think it’s possible to go Webster Junior High School and not be a cheerleader you have another think coming. I was conditioned to think being cheerleader was the main reason to go to junior high. Is it my fault I tipped over into the criminal element when I did not get elected? Not to mention I got fat. First I did not get elected and then I got fat and then I fell in with Charlie Pope and the next thing I knew I was lying on an altar in a nightgown.

  Thank God for my dog, Queen Elizabeth. She may be little and she may be handicapped but she will bite and everyone in Fort Smith knows it. She bit the mailman and because of that we do not have our mail delivered to the house. She bit a woman who came by selling cosmetics and almost cost my father all his money in a lawsuit. She has snapped at half the people at the junior high when she follows me to school. I wish she would bite most of them. Not that the student body got to vote, as if we were in a democracy or something. No, the teachers vote and it is based on who is sucking up to them the most and I do not suck up to people, no matter what.

  It was four days after I did not get elected that I met Charlie for the first time. I had seen him in the halls, wearing his leather jacket and with his hair dyed blue and six earrings in each ear. You had to notice him but that was when I was still trying to get the popular kids to like me so I just nodded to him and passed him by. Now it was four days after my three best friends went off to their first cheerleading practice and all I’d been doing for those four days was moping around and walking home by myself about three blocks an hour. I even threw up one day I swear I did. I just walked into the house and threw up several times. I could tell I was on my way to having an ulcer from only three months at Webster Junior High, but I didn’t tell my parents. They are very nervous about me as it is. I didn’t want to get them thinking about taking me back to the psychiatrist who gave me those drugs last year. So I kept my mouth shut and ate some crackers and peanut butter for supper and played with my dog. She is a mutt we saved from death at the pound and she loves me when all else fails.

  Here’s what happened next. It was Autumnfest, when all the stores downtown block off the streets and have carnival games and everyone is supposed to walk around admiring the maple trees and buying cotton candy and cookies from the AIDS Task Force and the Humane Society and the Women’s Shelter. I’ve been going every year for years. Except now my three best friends are going with the other cheerleaders and I’m left out. I wandered on down there on my bike. They are all still talking to me. They are trying to act like nothing’s happened. But the minute I saw them I thought, ride on by, don’t even talk to them, and that’s exactly what I did. I rode around behind the Bank of Fort Smith to where they had some games. Someone had come in from Fayetteville with this huge mattress made of Velcro and for twenty-five cents you could run at it and stick yourself to it. It was against the back of the brick bank building and you had to wear these filthy-looking jackets covered with Velcro so you’d stick when you hit the mattress.

  Three or four boys I knew were forking over quarters as fast as they could fish them out of their pockets. Charlie Pope was standing off to one side with his hands in his pockets looking contemptuous. As soon as he saw me watching him he got out a package of cigarettes and lit one and started smoking. I have been taught that contempt for human frailty is a cardinal sin. That’s my dad’s strongest indictment. Pride, Greed, Ignorance, Fear, Desire, the five daughters of Maya, King of Darkness, that’s what it says over my mother’s kitchen stove. My father moves the sign around and sometimes he changes it. For a long time underneath the five main cardinal sins, it said: Contempt for human frailty is self-hate.

  What does he know about how it feels to not get elected cheerleader when you were the smartest girl in second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade? Now they are going to make you a second-class citizen by a system you never agreed to be part of. I looked Charlie Pope in the eye. Obviously, he was running his own show. I guessed I could get used to the earrings. I walked over to his side of the parking lot and said, Hello, how you doing?

  “You want to throw yourself at the Velcro?” he asked. “I’m paying.”

  “Sure. Why not? Have you done it?”

  “Are you kidding? Here, have a turn.” He fished a quarter out of his pocket and held it out to me. His hands were not that clean and I could see the end of the snake he had tattooed on his wrist curling down to meet the inside of his palm. At any other time this might have grossed me out, but not today.

  “I have plenty of money,” I said. I turned my back to him and walked over to the guy selling tickets and bought four of them and put on one of the jackets and hurled myself against the wall. At the last minute I jumped as high as I could and ended up stuck to the wall about five feet off the ground. The crowd roared its approval. I did it a couple of other times but never managed to get that high again. I gave the last ticket to a kid I knew and put my own jacket back on.

  “You want to hang out?” Charlie asked. “Let’s walk up to the square.”

  “Sure,” I said, and walked along beside him. Now that I was nearer I could tell he was pretty strong and tall for a boy in the ninth grade. He started to pique my imagination. I have an extremely active imagination. It has always been difficult to keep me from being bored if there isn’t plenty for me to do. That is what the psychiatrist told my parents last year. They sent me to him to get over my trauma after one of Dad’s students killed himself and we had to have the funeral.

  “Did you read about that bear that got loose?” Charlie asked. “It’s the same one who came to town last spring. They stapled a tag to his ear when they caught him last year. I think it sucks to staple things to animals’ ears. He probably came back to get revenge.”

  “You should talk. With all those earrings in your ears. God, doesn’t that hurt?”

  “No. You ought to do it. You’re a big enough girl to have your ears pierced. Why don’t you do it?”

  “Because my grandfather is a biologist. He would go crazy if I put holes in my ears. He is paying me two thousand dollars a year not to smoke until I grow up.”

  “What’s that got to do with piercing your ears?” We had arrived at the corner of the square and there were my parents, coming along the street in my direction. I told Charlie good-bye and walked on over to meet them. They’re good people. Don’t get me wrong. They understood that the cheerleading failure had an effect on me. They just never could understand the breadth of it. They didn’t have to go to Webster Junior High every single weekday of their lives and pass their three best friends in their white and green uniforms. It was intolerable. It has ruined my life.

  I was in that church when the cops came and my name was in the papers and now I am going to have to go to Lausanne in Memphis which will cost all the money I could have had for college and even there the story will be known. I am a marked woman. There is nothing left to do but go on and try to get into medical school and go to Zaire and try to save some kids from dying of Ebola. I mean it. That’s the only thing I think of now. I will finish high school and college. Work my way through medical school. Stay up all night being an intern and then go to some foreign country that needs me and save lives. My life is finished in the U.S.A. There is nothing left for me here.

  I didn’t get involved with Charlie right away after the Velcro incident. I was too busy having my life go from bad to worse. My grades got lower and lower. I sank so low that I even got a D in science, my favorite subject. I lost my will to live after the cheerleading contest. I really did. I used to have nightmares about it. I would
be sitting there at my desk and Mr. Harmon would get up and read the list of girls who made it and my name was not there. That’s it. The day my life ended.

  I’ve been trying not to think like that. This friend of Dad’s who’s always been nice to me, this English teacher, gave me a copy of a new translation of Rilke and I read that for a while, then I just started reading Stephen King and Anne Rice and crap like that. At least I could talk to the other kids about Anne Rice. You think there’s anyone at Webster Junior High who wants to talk about Rilke? There aren’t even any teachers that know Rilke. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that. So I started reading Anne Rice and you know I told you I had a very active imagination and I think it was because I sort of halfway started believing in vampires that I started talking to Charlie Pope. He looks like a vampire. I was running into him when I’d go downtown on my bike. He wasn’t at Webster Junior High anymore when I started talking to him. He’d been kicked out for skateboarding in the halls and was going to this school called Uptown where they put kids who are too wild for the regular schools. Except he never even goes to Uptown. His parents are divorced. Neither of them wants him so they gave him an apartment near the school and he lives there with these three other guys and a couple of dogs his parents were getting rid of too.

  It’s really not that bad a place. I mean, Charlie keeps it clean. He’s a nut about cleanliness. We have that in common. So I think it was the apartment being clean and him being nice to the dogs that made me think it was all right to go over there. In spite of the posters on the wall. There were some naked girls on motorcycles and some other gross stuff I don’t want to talk about.