Grouper's Laws

by D. Philip Miller

  “But me?” Blondie pressed. “Why are you telling me?”

  Grouper’s shoulders trembled. Blondie feared he was going to cry. He didn’t know how he would handle that. He reached across the car and put his hand on Grouper’s shoulder. Even if he didn’t understand all that Grouper was trying to tell him — even if he found parts of it monstrous — he owed him some comfort in his distress. Grouper’s trembling stopped.

  When he spoke again, his voice was tremulous and faint.

  “Because I love you …. ”

  Before Blondie could stop himself, before he was aware of any thought whatsoever, he lifted his hand slightly from Grouper’s shoulder. He prayed Grouper hadn’t noticed, but he knew Grouper noticed everything.

  ” …. and maybe because I dared believe you might accept me for what I am.”

  There was a momentary catch in Grouper’s deep voice and a shuddering throughout his whole body. For an instant, Blondie considered tightening his fingers around Grouper’s shoulder in a firm grasp of support. But he couldn’t do it. What if Grouper misunderstood? What if he touched him back?

  “Sure, Grouper, sure,” Blondie said instead. “You know we’re buddies.”

  For a few seconds, Blondie felt proud of himself for extending himself that far. Then he felt ashamed. His words had fallen well short of what Grouper needed — and already it was much too late to add to them.

  On the way back to Grouper’s house, Blondie attempted to make small talk with him, as if nothing momentous had happened. But, as he lay in bed later, questioning his every word and gesture, he knew he’d botched some critical and irretrievable moment in time and that, all good intentions aside, things would never be the same between him and Grouper again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Everyone was psyched. The zaniness had started as soon as they’d made the big buy — five cases of Pabst in Baltimore County. They’d put most of their treasure in a large cooler Feller’d copped from his folks. One case remained up front for on the way.

  The radio, on full blast, bombarded them with “The Loco-motion” by Little Eva, the “Wah-wahtusi” by the Orlons, and “Palisades Park” by Freddy Cannon. When “The Stripper” came on, Shakes began to take his shirt off.

  “Leave it on,” Brick ordered. “I don’t want to get sick.”

  Long before they reached the endless steel-and-concrete hump of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Shakes was blasted. Every time they passed a car full of young people headed their way — and there were plenty — Shakes stuck his head out the window and shouted “R-raise H-hell!” as loud as he could.

  Two guys in a red MG took umbrage at Shakes’ enthusiasm and shot him the finger as they approached the high point of the bridge. Shakes’ response was to drop his shorts and stick his skinny butt out the window. While tilting white sails sliced across the deep blue of the Bay, Shakes mooned both halves of Maryland.

  Dispatch stopped for gas. After placing the pump in the tank, he headed for a pay phone. Anger masked his face when he returned.

  “I thought I had Meryl ready to give me a divorce,” he told them. “I offered her my new car. I know there’s someone she likes at the store where she works.”

  “So what happened?” Blondie asked.

  “She said she’d be happy to take my car, but no divorce.”

  “That’s a bunch of shit,” Brick said.

  “L-long d-distance shit,” Shakes added.

  “I’m sure there’s a moral in this,” Feller said. “Too bad Grouper’s not here. Blondie, you’re not too bad with words. Why don’t you take a shot?”

  Blondie wasn’t sure it was appropriate for him to be postulating laws in

  Grouper’s absence —even thinking about Grouper left him feeling unsettled — but he couldn’t resist the flattery. After giving the matter some thought, he said, “Never spend good money for bad news.”

  “Not bad,” Feller nodded. “Not bad.”

  Dispatch’s call served to remind Blondie of an important fact. No matter how many sorties the group went on, or how far they traveled, they couldn’t escape the pesky, insistent reality of the rest of their lives.

  The P-mobile hurtled onward, over the flat brown and green arm of Maryland’s eastern shore, past marshes of beige reeds and brackish water, past small farms and towns and occasional groves of trees. Road signs chronicled their progress. Ocean City - 56. Ocean City - 33. Ocean City - 12.

  They reached the outskirts at 7:30, as the sun was going down, its last rays painting the whitewashed buildings a tawny gold and turning their windows into fire.

  The mournful voice of Ray Charles crooning “You Don’t Know Me” drifted from the radio. It was the lament of a lover whose adored one has no idea of his devotion.

  The song made Blondie sad. He thought of Tammy.

  “We better get laid,” Dispatch said when they reached the city limits. “It took us a lot of gas to get here.”

  “What’re you worrying about?” Feller asked. “We all chipped in. Anyway, we’re all going to get laid. We’ve got to believe that.”

  “I heard some girls from Fenton were coming over this weekend,” Dispatch said.

  “Who?” everyone asked at once.

  “I think Delores … ”

  Feller groaned. A couple weeks before, he’d given her the pink slip. He’d been avoiding her ever since.

  “And Mary Braithwaite and the Thompson twins.”

  “Dogs,” Brick said.

  “And someone told me Tammy Hollander was coming with her parents.”

  Blondie felt a rush in his chest. But what were the odds he’d run into her? This was the big weekend of the year for Maryland’s teenagers. Thousands upon thousands of them would be scrabbling around the city like sand crabs.

  No one had thought to make reservations, so they prowled the narrow streets for a half hour, checking out one hotel after the other. All were full.

  “Good job, Dispatch,” Brick said.

  “Me? I never said I’d get a room.”

  Several blocks from the boardwalk and farther from the center of town than they wanted, they discovered a droopy inn grandly named the Georgian. A vacancy sign peeked out a window. Blondie volunteered to go in.

  The screen door failed to close behind him. The lobby reeked of beer and vomit. Sand on the linoleum grated with each step he took. Blondie was encouraged. The Georgian seemed to be everything they were looking for.

  A frowzy woman on the far side of middle age greeted Blondie like a long-lost friend. She wore a flowered cotton dress and a faded rose in her hair. She was drunk.

  “I’m Kitty.” She held out her hand.

  Blondie didn’t know if she wanted him to kiss it or what. He decided on “or what” and gave it a polite shake.

  “Your sign says you have rooms.”

  “I always have rooms,” she complained.

  “Do you have two together?”

  “Not good ones.”

  Understood, Blondie thought.

  “I’d like to see them anyway,” he said.

  Navigating her way on unsteady legs, Kitty led him up two flights of creaking stairs and toward the back of the building.

  The first room was a wreck. Split wallpaper curled toward the ceiling. Splinters forested the floor. All three cots sagged in the middle like over-raced thoroughbreds. A rusted sink huddled in one corner, its faucet dripping.

  The adjoining room was better. It didn’t have wallpaper or a sink and the bedsprings were close to horizontal. There was even a slight view of the ocean.

  “How much?” Blondie asked.

  While she puzzled it out, Blondie studied the thick sacks under her eyes, footlockers for years of disappointment.

  “Can you handle twenty-five a night?” she finally asked.

  Blondie looked at her.

  “That’s for both rooms,” she added.

  Five bucks per person per night? That wa
s a bargain.

  “Sure.”

  By the time Dispatch parked the P-mobile — no mean feat in a town of small streets lined with “no parking” signs — and they’d carried their gear to their rooms, it was eight-thirty.

  Shakes opened the cooler and downed two more beers. The rest of them piled onto the sagging cots. Feathers exploded from holes in the mattresses.

  “I think you’ve had enough,” Feller said to Shakes. “Some of the rest of us are planning on drinking this weekend.”

  Blondie just wanted to crash, but the lure of the boardwalk was too great for the others. A beer or two each replenished their energy and spirits. They almost dragged Blondie out the door with them.

  In four blocks, they reached the north end of the boardwalk. Heading south, they passed bevies of young females in swimsuits or Bermuda shorts and tee shirts. They giggled and chirped in what Blondie guessed was some sort of oceanside ecstasy. The most identifiable — and common sound — was the word “he.”

  As he walked along, listening to the crash of the sea and feeling the salt air scrub the day’s sweat away, Blondie began to feel rejuvenated. He’d had doubts anything would come of their trip to the ocean, but he was growing more optimistic. There were so many girls. They had to have come for the same reason as the guys.

  As they drew nearer the center of town, shops began to crowd the aging wooden walkway offering suntan lotions, tacky souvenirs, tee shirts, and food of all kinds.

  Shakes was still smashed. He suggested they crawl under the boardwalk and look up through the cracks to “see what they could see.”

  “Great idea,” Feller scoffed. “All the girls are wearing bathing suits or shorts.”

  “We could walk all night, but, eventually, we’ve got to make our move,” Dispatch said, while casting a voracious look at some passing girls.

  The group appointed Dispatch and Feller, who were considered the cockiest, to try and negotiate a deal with the next worthy group of girls — meaning girls who were not too young or too ugly to take back to their rooms.

  “You guys get out of sight,” Feller ordered the rest of them.

  “N-now w-we can get under the b-boardwalk,” Shakes enthused.

  Blondie felt like an untouchable hiding under the rotting timbers. He saw no reason he shouldn’t have stayed with Feller and Dispatch. He was presentable. Brick grumped beside a piling, while Shakes put his eye against an overhead knothole, hoping for a “beaver shot.”

  A clatter of sandals and clogs announced approaching quarry. Four of them. Blondie could see through the aging boards that, in spite of the late hour, they all still wore swimsuits.

  “Good evening, ladies,” Blondie heard Feller say.

  There was some giggling.

  “No need to hurry,” Dispatch added.

  The girls stopped. Blondie allowed himself a dose of optimism.

  There were several minutes of “Whatcha doing?” and “Where you from?” and that sort of thing. Then, Feller went for the sale.

  “We have a whole cooler full of beer in our room,” he said.

  “H-hey, that’s j-just for us,” Shakes squealed from below.

  “What was that?” one of the girls asked.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Feller said. “I forgot to introduce my friends.”

  “What friends?”

  “Guys, you can come up now,” Feller called.

  Blondie felt stupid crawling from beneath the boardwalk. Shakes lost his balance and fell back into the sand, emitting a loud belch.

  “Who’s that?” one of the girls said with disgust.

  “Don’t mind him,” Feller said. “He’s just a little drunk.”

  Blondie decided a couple of the girls weren’t too bad. Of course, there was no guarantee he’d get one of them. Even if not, the idea of four scantily clad females in their rooms was most appealing.

  It was going well. Feller and Dispatch had begun walking back toward the Georgian, with the girls chatting and laughing beside them.

  “Which one d-do I g-get?” Shakes shouted from behind.

  The girls turned and looked at him. He was wearing baggy checkered Bermudas and a T-shirt with a picture of a horse on it. Beneath its hooves was printed the word “Stud.” Sand coated his arms and legs.

  “He’s not part of the deal,” one of the girls said.

  “I g-gotta have a g-girl,” Shakes said.

  “Maybe you could skip tonight,” Feller suggested to him.

  “N-no w-ay. I p-paid the s-same as everyone else and I sh-should g-get l-laid like everyone else.”

  The girls stopped walking.

  “I thought this was just for some beer and conversation,” a cute brunette said to Feller. “Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Ignore him,” Feller said. “He’s out of it.”

  “N-not out of it,” Shakes retorted. “S-sick.”

  He struggled to the railing and let his lunch go in a yellow-brown torrent.

  The girls disappeared like spring snow.

  “Jesus Christ,” Brick said.

  “Let’s call it a night,” Blondie suggested.

  Everyone agreed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Morning light roosted on Blondie’s face, dueling on the insides of his eyelids with the remaining narcosis of several cans of beer. Blondie looked over at Feller’s sheet-shrouded body. His face was as smooth and serene as a child’s. They were in the back room, the “premier suite.” as Feller had dubbed it. He’d convinced the others it was his due for founding the Club.

  A continuous clattering resounded from the other side of the wall. It sounded like a Nazi column goose-stepping up the stairs. What were all these people doing up so early? Blondie grabbed his watch from the floor. It was already ten o’clock.

  Blondie pulled on his shorts and a tee shirt and wandered out to the main room. Brick lay face down on his bed like a hit-and-run victim. Dispatch was already in the morgue, covered complete by a sheet. Shakes sprawled on his back, arms and legs at all angles, like a broken doll. He was snoring loudly.

  Blondie eased open the door and slipped into the hall. He ambled down the decaying floorboards to a large balcony above the front entrance and plopped down in one of the metal rockers. He propped his feet on the balustrade and let the sun knead its warmth into his arms and legs.

  He watched the morning traffic, mainly girls and guys streaming toward the beach with radios, coolers, blankets and other paraphernalia. He felt remote and godlike form his perch above the street.

  Blondie heard someone join him on the balcony. It was a young man in flowered surfer shorts, nothing else. He was sipping something from a paper cup.

  “Hi, I’m Donald Duck and I don’t give a fuck,” he said. He held up his cup. “Bacardi and Coke,” he explained, though Blondie hadn’t asked.

  Blondie resented the intrusion. After a while, Blondie stole a closer look at the interloper. He was about six feet tall and lean, his tan belly taut as rawhide. He seemed preoccupied with drinking his rum and staring at the sky.

  When he caught Blondie looking at him, he started talking again. He told Blondie he was a native of Dundalk, a sophomore at the University of Maryland, and a member of the school’s lacrosse team. He straddled the railing and leaned back against the wall, letting the sun wash over his freckled face and reddish hair.

  “Nirvana,” he said.

  A few minutes later, another young man, wearing a U. of Md. tee shirt over jockey shorts, wandered out to the porch. He was drinking a beer and scratching his testicles.

  “This is George,” the Duck told Blondie. “Around campus, he’s known as Gross George.”

  He was shorter and fatter than his friend, with a rodent’s face and rat hair. He had a vacant look in his eyes and Blondie doubted it was because of the beer.

  Without pretext, Donald told Blondie a few stories about George: how he’d shown up uninvited at a snotty sorority
party in jack boots and a motorcycle outfit … how he’d mooned the University librarian … how he’d thrown up on a visiting soccer team’s bus and dared anyone to do anything about it.

  “We’re both members of Chi fraternity,” Donald concluded with a burst of pride. “Tri-Chi.”

  George wandered around the porch, tugging at his privates as if he couldn’t get them where he wanted.

  “Hey George, do something gross,” Donald said to him.

  George went over to the railing and yelled down at some passing girls, “Is it too early in the morning for a little SOMF action?”

  The girls glanced up at George in horror and hurried off. George went back inside.

  “What was that word he used?” Blondie asked.

  “What? SOMF? You don’t know that one. It’s big on campus. They put it on every issue of the school newspaper. S-O-M-F … sit on my face.”

  “You learn something every day,” Blondie commented.

  “Yeah,” Donald agreed. “Say, what’s your name?”

  “Blondie.”

  “That figures. Want a drink?”

  Blondie started to say no, then thought, “what the hell” and followed Donald to a room a couple doors down the hall. George was lying on the bed stark naked.

  “Christ, George,” Donald said to him with mild disapproval.

  He turned to Blondie.

  “Rum or beer?”

  “Beer’s fine.”

  Donald handed him a lukewarm Hamm’s. Blondie hated Hamm’s, but he didn’t want to appear ungrateful.

  Donald asked him what college he went to.

  “I just graduated from high school in June,” Blondie said.

  “Hey, man, you’re in for some good times then. College is a blast.”

  Blondie scrutinized the two of them. Were they what people meant by “college men”? They didn’t act any differently from the B & F Club. He’d thought college guys would be more mature, more intellectual, their conversation laced with references to famous writers and philosophers. He hoped they weren’t typical.

  “Where are you going to go to college?” Donald asked.