Ghosts of Tom Joad (11 page)

“Yeah, c'mon, Muley.”

“I ain't gonna do it. I don't even know them.”

“C'mon, don't be a baby.”

“I don't even know them. You ask them, Tim.”

“Alright. Lemme in front.” I went over the front bench seat into the back so Tim could move up.

Muley slowly glided that old Pontiac up to them girls. They saw us coming, probably from yesterday, but played it cool like girls were always better at than boys.

“Hey Cindy,” said Tim.

“How you doing?”

“I'm fine. You need a ride somewhere?” Tim got held back in fourth grade and was older. He knew this kinda stuff.

“Who're you with in there?”

“This is my friend, um, Tom, and that's Earl. Where're you going?”

Since Tim was older, he knew not to call Muley by his nickname in front of girls and so called him Tom like his mom did.

“Where are you going?” Tim kept after them. “C'mon, it's rainin' and we got beer.” They climbed in. Having a case of Stroh's, a decent car and some friends was like being James Bond in Reeve.

“What happened to your leg?” It was the cute one, pointing to my ankle. I guess I'd been rubbing it without thinking.

“Um, I hurt it during football practice.”

Tim cut in. “Earl used to be on the Reeve team with me until he got hurt. Where do you two go to school?”

“Madison. We're just over here looking for something to do. Cindy's mom thinks we're babysitting.” Not a bad start …

I caught Cindy checking her hair in the side view mirror. Okay…

She looked quickly toward her girlfriend. Maybe?

“You all got any more beer?” said Cindy.

Bingo.

“Ladies, keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times 'cause it may get a little bumpy!”

This time the three of us boys went into the store together to get more beer. The two girls waiting in the car, using the rearview to smudge their makeup or something. Blue eye shadow was the thing that year. Tim and Rich ran in to the store first 'cause of the rain, while I got pretty wet moving as slow as I did with my ankle messed up. I was walking toward the back where they kept the beer when I overheard them.

“Shit, Tim. We got two girls waiting out there. Think we'll get home base tonight?”

“I don't know—sure as hell not with three of us around. We gotta ditch Earl.”

“I feel bad, leavin' him in the rain and—”

“Yeah, I feel bad too, but you wanna get some tonight or what? C'mon, don't be a sissy.”

They ran towards the front of the store with the twelve-packs of beer under their arms like footballs, threw money at Mike's sister behind the register and were back to the car with the urgency that only seventeen-year-old boys surfing waves of
seventeen-year-old boy hormones and a lot of beer drunk too quickly could produce.

Dripping wet and with a long walk home in the rain, I counted my steps to the front door, barely said “Hi” to Mike's sister on the way out and, a little light-headed still from the beer I'd drunk earlier, started out across the parking lot, not giving much of a fuck about much.

I
T WAS MOM
here on the bus. She said to me:

That day was one of those days when it seemed as soon as I got the lunch dishes put away it was time for dinner.

“You worried about Earl?” I asked your dad. “About him losing his scholarship?”

“He never had no scholarship.”

“You know what I mean, Ray.”

“He don't need college. None of us did. Ain't nothing wrong with working with your hands for a living, maybe joining the service and learning a skill, growing up some like I did in Korea and my old man did in Germany. Traditions don't get to be traditions by accident, you know Sissy. Hell, it'd do the boy good, make a man outta him finally.”

I ignored him and attended to cleaning up. I could hear the thunder outside and the lights flickered.

“Sounds like we're in for a doozy tonight. Hope the power stays on.”

“I'm just concerned, Ray.”

“And you're sayin' I'm not?”

“I ain't sayin' nothing about you.”

“I care just as much about him as you do. But at least I'm not being impractical. Now goddamnit, I'm trying to watch TV, Sissy.”

There was a long stretch of silence until the next commercial came on. We had to account for these things in our lives during sixty second breaks.

“I read in ‘Dear Abby' tonight a letter from a wife whose husband has the same problem as us.”

“We ain't got no problem.”

“We do Ray. Lori said you even told Stan about it outside the Bowl America and that's why you two was mad at each other.”

“To Hell with Stan, and to Hell with him again for telling Lori. I told you, we ain't got no problem.”

“Dear Abby said in the paper to that lady that her husband should discuss it with their family physician or clergyman.”

“Is that why you made the meatloaf tonight? To soften me up for this?”

“Ray—”

“Well, it didn't work. It didn't soften me up for nothing.”

“I thought meatloaf was your favorite.”

“It tasted like shit.”

“I, well, I didn't have much time to get it ready. I'm sorry Ray. You know now I have to work all day waitressin' at that restaurant.”

“Well maybe that ain't right neither. I told you before, Sissy. Now Monday you call that restaurant and quit. You tell 'em you're needed at home, which is true. A man can't raise his family when his wife's out all day.”

“Ray, you know how things are.”

“I've had enough with your working. You are gonna quit that job.”

“No I ain't.”

“How can you expect me to act like a man when you refuse to treat me like one. It ain't my fault—Stan was right—if you was more of a goddamn wife, I could be more of a husband.”

“You're blaming this on me? The fact that you and me ain't slept like husband and wife for all this time is my fault?”

“Goddamn right. I'm going to get a beer.”

“Don't you go into that kitchen.”

“What?” Your dad said it like it was the first time he ever said the word out loud.

“I said, don't you go into that kitchen. You are gonna sit here and listen to me.”

“Why—”

I was nearly hysterical, shouting over the rain and thunder at your dad.

“You are gonna sit here and goddamn listen to me. I ain't gonna take no blame, not no more Ray. I ain't gonna let you scream at me like I was some little girl you screwed after color guard practice. You remember that Ray? I was kneeling on the high school track waitin' to start marching and you walked up behind me and scared me, holdin' your hands over my eyes. I stood up and brushed the gravel off my knees, and Mrs. Reardon yelled at you, and you just acted so cool and calm and walked off. I had to take the blame for all that happened later, until your momma and daddy forced you to, but I ain't gonna take no blame for this. I am a proper wife, goddammit. I done everything I could for you, even wore that awful mail order
fancy underwear you made me wear. Said it would help, but it didn't, and I felt like a whore not no wife. And now you want me to quit work so you can feel like somebody you ain't no more. I ain't so stupid that I don't know. I am livin' and breathin' and—”

That was it. I broke down. I was done. The thunderstorm which began earlier in the evening had reached its peak so that my sobbing could hardly be heard by anyone that might have been listening. I fell back into the divan. Your dad Ray was standing, silhouetted in the kitchen doorway. A change had occurred in his face, something was broken there too when I looked up at him.

“What—” I said, more a gasp than a word by then. Ray had moved back into the shadow more, so I couldn't see him when he told me:

“Everything's dying around here; how can I be any different Sissy?”

He wandered off into the kitchen. I sat down in front of the television, commercials over, commercials back on.

J
UST ME NOW,
remembering that same night.

There was enough rain coming down to know God was angry too and talking back. I looked up, my face taking hard water, the storm reluctant to let me go. After a point, dragging my ankle through the rain, it was impossible to have been wetter. I wasn't cold, though. It was still summer, there was plenty of heat still held in the ground to burn off. I was near the bowling alley where my dad and all of them drank after work. I figured I could
dry off, maybe find a ride home. I'd been in once or twice before, sent looking for Dad by Mom, but never went in for myself. You know, in a decent world that would have been the end of this night. I would have walked home, had dinner. Going to bed and waking up the next morning used to solve problems in the small town of Reeve, Ohio. But I was not really there anymore.

Instead, when I walked into the bar in that bowling alley, it turned out I was the most entertainment those old drunks had had all evening.

“Been swimming or something?”

“Ain't you a bit young to be drinkin' here?”

“I wish I was that young, so I could do more drinkin'.”

“Why hell, it's Ray's boy! Hey there, Earl. I just knew with that ankle you'd be out on the town, not being in training no more.”

“Yeah and gettin' laid. Christ, the pussy you young fellas get.”

“So how you doin', Earl? You look all wet.”

“If you're lookin' for your daddy, he ain't been in tonight.”

“I came in to get outta the rain,” I said, “and maybe for a drink.”

“He really ain't in training.”

“Don't bring him a glass of water. He's got enough of that already.”

I thought maybe they'd put me out or something, but I was just accepted, no need for an initiation. Just showing up was enough; everyone could join the team. I realize now that in a way they were waiting for me, knowing sooner or later that we all ended up walking in one night. With that in mind, it was less of a
surprise than I would've thought just a few hours ago when Mr. Matlock came out of the one toilet (there was no need for a ladies' room) and slapped money on the counter, paying for my beer.

“So how come you're so polite all of a sudden Matlock?”

“Same reason you're not, it's the way I was brought up. I just want to buy young Earl here a beer.”

“That's generous of you,” said one of them men. “You ain't never bought me a beer.”

“Ah hell, quit your joking. Earl's a good boy,” said Mr. Matlock, slapping me on my wet back. “I know he'll do the same thing for me someday.”

M
OM ON THE
bus, remembering:

I was sitting alone in the darkened living room, TV on, but I was listening to the rain. I never heard Ray leave the kitchen, but he didn't answer me, so I tied my housecoat and walked over. The kitchen was dark save for the lightning that was slipping in through the windows and the orange dot of the timer on the stove. I tried at first to adjust my eyes, but instead turned on the overhead. It was a harsh light, and I was always after your dad to replace it with something nicer, but he never did. That night, it showed me Ray at the kitchen table, a half-empty liquor bottle beside him. A water glass full of whiskey nearby. He hardly ever drank much but beer, and I think we had that whiskey left over from a factory giveaway a couple of Christmases ago. The leftover Dairy Queen from before was spilled and dripping to the floor. I guess Ray had been eating it out of the container.
The only sound besides that storm was the splat-splat of the melting ice cream hittin' the floor.

“Ray, don't you—” I said to him, but he wasn't listening. I walked across the room to the sink, got a wet dish rag and wiped up the ice cream. What else was I to do? I sat down and poured myself a drink from Ray's bottle.

T
HAT'S WHAT
M
OM
was saying to me on the bus, but in my head I was still at the bar, drinking with Mr. Matlock and two or three other men. Several empty beer pitchers sat on the table in front of us.

“So anyway,” began one of the men, “The Big Bad Wolf jumps out and says, ‘I'm gonna eat you, Little Red Riding Hood,' and she says, ‘Eat, eat, eat. Doesn't anybody ever fuck anymore?'”

“Listen to this one. I was in bed with a blind girl last night and she said that I had the biggest dick she had ever laid her hands on. I said, ‘Honey, you're pulling my leg.'”

“You hear the Irish Virgin's Prayer? Lord have Murphy on me.”

“Boy sittin' with his girlfriend watching a stallion and a mare havin' at it. He says, ‘I wish I was doing that right now.' Girl says, ‘Go ahead, she's your horse.'”

“So how's it working out with that younger woman you're datin'?”

“She's added years to my life.”

“Yeah, you look ten years older.”

“This one guy says 'Why so down?” and the other answers ‘Problems with the wife. She cut me back to only once a week for sex.' The first says ‘Don't feel so bad, she cut all the other guys back too.'”

“So Earl,” said one of 'em, “what, you figure you'll be droppin' out of school and looking for a job now that football's finished for you? I mean, why else stay in school, right? Hard times at the factory, but they might have something.”

“Hell, leave him alone. The boy's only what, seventeen? Eighteen? He's gonna have his whole life to work, ain't you, Earl?”

“Earl, you tell your daddy to haul you down here tomorrow night again. The bunch of us can do some real drinking.”

“Sounds good,” said Mr. Matlock. “Well c'mon, Earl. I know you need a ride home.”

Me and Mr. Matlock left the bar, got in his car.

“Your folks gonna be upset with you comin' home this late? Need me to say something to them for you?”