Blackbird (13 page)

And suddenly I had no pants on, and my dick was hard. And Marshall stopped talking and just smiled at me, as if he knew every secret of my soul. As if he’d found my letters, and read each one out loud.

I woke up suddenly, just as the switch clicked clicked clicked behind my balls. And I was shooting into my underpants. Again and again and again.

Todd body-blocked his way into the choir room, backpack and guitar in hand; he looked up to where we sat (meeting my eyes for a moment), and started up the tiers toward us.

“Here he comes,” Cherie whispered, as if I hadn’t noticed. She’ll do that sometimes – just up and state the totally obvious like that – and it makes me smile.

I nudged Efrem in the arm and sing-songed through my teeth, “Now you just make nice to him, or I’ll break your ar-rm.”

“Okay, okay.”

“How’s it goin’, you guys?” Todd almost smiled. He was playing Act Like Nothing’s Wrong, but he wasn’t terribly good at it.

Cherie whispered hello halfway into my shoulder, and Efrem managed to say “How’s it goin’” without sounding too too sarcastic. And I said, “How are you?” I looked into Todd’s eyes and hoped he wouldn’t just say “All right” or something. And of course he said, “All right,” and went to stow his guitar away.

Halfway through his hook shot I said, “Let’s do ‘Blackbird,’ okay?” One of the things Todd Waterson is proudest of in his whole life is that he can play the entire guitar part of “Blackbird” by heart.

It had taken him weeks to teach himself that song – he’s not exactly Hendrix, after all. I remember seeing him, lunch hour after lunch hour, folded up into a corner of the choir room (often with Leslie curled up against him), frowning with concentration, the tip of his tongue peeking out of the side of his mouth as he practised the fingerings over and over.

“‘Blackbird’?” He lowered the guitar case to his side.

“Yeah.”

“That’s her favorite song.” Meaning Leslie’s, of course. And the look on Todd’s face when he said that, well it could nearly make you cry. It was as close to a real smile as he’d probably had on his lips for days, but if I wasn’t mistaken, there were tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.

“I know.” Why else would a guy knock himself out like that just to learn a song?

“Will you sing it?” Todd clicked open the guitar case and lifted out the shiny instrument.

“Try and stop him,” Efrem said.

Todd slid his fingers into the intro and tapped the stiletto-point toe of his boot against the floor, head down, his yellow-gold hair nearly obscuring his face. I closed my eyes and sang, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night / Take these broken wings and learn to fly.…”

Todd did the accompaniment without a single hitch, and when we finished there was some applause. And I felt so good, so warm, a feeling like Saturday morning in bed and pancakes for breakfast.

“Nice job,” I said, and opened my eyes, feeling so good I dared to touch Todd, softly, on the knee.

“Thanks.” He looked up from his guitar, and he was smiling his perfect smile. And his eyes were shiny with tears. I looked into Todd’s pale-blue eyes, and it occurred to me for (strangely) the very first time that Todd must love Leslie. Really love her. He was wearing his love for Leslie Crandall (and his hurt at having lost her, he knew not for how long) like a gaudy floral-print necktie. You could see it for blocks.

And I could only assume that Leslie loved Todd as well. After all, these two didn’t just suck face on the senior lawn (though heaven knows they did that, too); they made love. Probably on as close to a regular basis as they could manage. And now Leslie was carrying Todd’s baby inside her. And all at once, I was jealous. Jealous of Todd, of the love he felt for Leslie, jealous of hers for him, even jealous of his pain. And of course I immediately felt like shit for feeling jealous.

It was nothing new. Just the same old I Want A Boyfriend Blues I’d been having in one form or another since I was twelve years old. Only stronger, more urgent now than ever before. Because I was seventeen and it was spring. Because there were Todd and Skipper and entire locker rooms full of sexy guys, seemingly put on the earth for the sole purpose of making me crazy, and there’s only so much unrequited lust anybody can take. But mostly because of Marshall.

I had Marshall MacNeill on the brain.

I’d thought about him almost constantly since I’d left his old piece-of-shit Saab the evening before. I’d had that dream about him just before waking up in the morning and then beat off thinking about him before leaving for school. On the bus, while pretending to review irregular French verbs, I reviewed everything I could remember about Marshall, his every look and word and movement of his dark, thick eyebrow from the first time I laid eyes on him walking past me down the hall at the J.C. There were two shiny little images of Marshall MacNeill in Todd Waterson’s eyes before he blinked them back (along with some tears), gave his hair a flip, and reached down to repack his guitar.

Todd stowed his guitar on top of the cabinet, sniffed a wet sniff, and said, “See you, guys.” I said, “See ya, Todd,” and he left. Cherie was attached to my right arm, and Efrem was talking and talking about something or other, and I was thinking about what it might feel like to kiss Marshall’s lips. The thought of it made my lips itch and started my dick getting hard, and I tried to think about something else (anything else), but it was like trying not to think about pink elephants. So I thought the Twenty-third Psalm to myself, and I guess some of the words must have leaked out of my mind and out of my mouth, because Cherie said, “What?” And Efrem gave me a look and said, “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

And I had to admit I hadn’t. And Efrem said, “What’s on your mind, Clem?” And I wanted to, God how I wanted to tell him! It would have poured out of my mouth like Kool-Aid from a pitcher: “His name is Marshall Two-Hawks MacNeill and his eyebrows and his ears and O-my-God his smile and he’s part Cherokee and I think he likes me and God Bless America, I think he’s even gay!”

I didn’t say that, of course. I just said, “Nothing.” Efrem didn’t believe me, of course. Neither did Cherie. Who would?

And I really did think so. Think Marshall was gay, I mean. I’d decided that on the bus, after thinking over everything Marshall had said and done. I was practically sure. And the thought that Marshall MacNeill might indeed be gay made him suddenly more exciting, more desirable to me than Todd or even Skipper, both of whom I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt were straight.

I had Marshall MacNeill like a new strain of flu for the rest of that Thursday and most of Friday. I wrote his name over and over, in every conceivable calligraphy, on the inside flaps of the brown paper slipcovers of my school books. Mr. Katz caught me daydreaming about Marshall’s arm around me, and the wonderful funk of his armpit; and when I couldn’t remember what WPA stood for, Katz turned up his lip and gave me a look, and I knew it would be a cold day in you-know-where before he’d be letting me out of his class again, Honor Scholar or no. In the gym, I worked out with new purpose, with the thought that the better I could make myself look, the better my chances that Marshall MacNeill might want me.

I wondered how I would survive an entire week before seeing him again.

I was, in fact, so completely preoccupied with Marshall that on Friday during lunch, when Cherie said, “You haven’t forgotten about tomorrow, have you?” I had indeed forgotten. It was a rude splashdown back into immediate reality. And my immediate reality was that I had a date to make love (or at least attempt to make love) with Cherie Baker on Saturday afternoon.

I got that uncomfortable gas feeling in my stomach.

Chapter Ten

I still had it Saturday morning. I’d hardly slept all night, and I couldn’t remember any dreams. It wasn’t a particularly cold morning, but I trembled like it was ten below. My stomach felt as if I’d swallowed a brass bookend; I stared down a plate of grits and eggs until I couldn’t stare anymore, then I gave up and excused myself from the table. Mom said, “What’s the matter, baby? Don’t you feel well?” I said, “I’m okay, Ma,” and headed off to my room.

I lay on my bed with my eyes closed and played
Goodbye Yellow
Brick Road
, all four sides all the way through, twice, trembling and trying not to get the dry heaves. By which time it was nearly noon, which was when I was supposed to meet Cherie at her house. I was still trembling, so I put a jacket on even though it wasn’t cold.

Mom was bent over the old Singer Touch-N-Sew, zigzag-stitching a hem on a dress.

I called, “I’m going to Cherie’s, Ma,” over the sound of the sewing machine.

“Don’t make a nuisance out of yourself,” Mom said, never taking her eyes off her stitch.

“I won’t, Ma.” One of the biggest fears of Mom’s life is the thought that a child of hers should visit someone’s house long enough to become a nuisance. I nearly told her Mr. and Mrs. Baker weren’t home, but thought better of it.

Dad was out in the front yard, crouched over a sprinkler head, trimming the grass around it with a pair of shears. He had on a pair of old work pants and a tank-top undershirt. It is without fear of contradiction that I can say that I’ve got the sexiest father of anybody I know. Most of the men in town Dad’s age are fat and bald and wear polyester leisure suits. My dad looks like Harry Belafonte. I mean it: everybody says so. In fact, now and then some total stranger will stop Dad on the street and beg for an autograph. He was on the boxing team in the army, and he’s still built like a boxer – arms like a weightlifter, even though he’s hardly lifted anything heavier than a forkful of food since the Korean War. What with Mom, who looks like Dorothy Dandridge, especially when she gets all dolled up, I often wonder how I could spring from two such good-looking people and end up looking so, well, commonplace.

I could never tell him, of course, but I must admit to having sort of a crush on my dad. I mean, he’s so strong and so very handsome. When I was a kid, up until I was about thirteen, Dad used to wake me up on Saturday mornings by lying full-out on top of me and bouncing on the bed. Then he’d rub his rough face against mine and say, “Wake up, Bonie.” That was his name for me when I was a kid: Bonie Maronie – because I was so skinny, I guess. He’d always have that just-out-of-bed warmth to him, and sort of a funky, sour morning smell that for some reason I liked. That was one of the best things in my whole life, those Saturday morning wake-up calls. He up and stopped doing it all of a sudden when I turned thirteen, about the same time he decided I was too old to sit in his big recliner chair with him and cuddle.

I miss it.

Anyway, I stood just outside the front door and watched the muscles in Dad’s big back moving underneath his shirt for a minute before starting out for Cherie’s. I called, “See ya later, Dad.”

“Going to see Cherie?”

“Yeah.”

Dad smiled his handsome “Day-o” smile that probably gives some of our little town’s Mormon white ladies some real problems.

He gave me a look, a sort of man-to-man conspiratorial look (or so it seemed to me), and said, “You got everything?”

“Uh-huh.”

By “everything,” Dad was asking if I had a rubber with me. I swear. A couple of months before, Dad took me aside just as I was on my way to Cherie’s. He led me over to the far side of the garage, and put his arm around me and said, “You’re seeing a lot of this girl.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now I know I don’t have to go into a whole speech about the birds and bees. I’m sure you know about all that.”

I said, “Uh-huh.” But the fact is I didn’t know diddly.

“You’re protecting yourself, I hope.”

“Protecting myself?” What
was
the man talking about?

“Of course, son. I’m sure you think very highly of this girl, but I’m sure you don’t plan to marry her right away. At least, I hope not.”

Which was when it finally dawned on me that he thought I was screwing Cherie. Actually, I was teaching her macramé.

“Dad,” I said, “you really don’t have to worry about that.”

“She said she’s taking care of it,” he said with a knowing look.

“Didn’t she? They’ll say that, young girls will.” He looked around in a quick B-movie is-the-coast-clear look, then pulled the little square foil packet out of his back pocket. “Protect yourself, son. Always.” And he pressed the little packet firmly into my palm. Then he squeezed my shoulder and gave me a little wink and said, “Be good.” It didn’t seem like the time to explain to him that I was not putting it to Cherie Baker or any other girl, nor did I have the slightest desire to do so. So I tucked the rubber into my back pocket and said, “Thanks, Dad,” trying to look as nonchalant as possible, and started off.

“Oh, and son – ” Dad gestured me back. “Top drawer of the nightstand on my side. When you need more.”

So here I was, ready to actually do it with Cherie for the first time, with Dad assuming I’d been doing it for months – I’d gotten into the habit of carrying a rubber around in my wallet, and taking a new one out of the folks’ bedroom every so often, throwing away the old one. From the smile on Dad’s face, it was obvious he had no idea that if I had eaten any breakfast, I’d probably be upchucking all over the front lawn.