How the Hula Girl Sings (12 page)
Then I knew what this poor fool was talking about right away.
STAY.
Poor old Junior wanted to keep that pain and anguish all to himself. He wanted it to live and breathe and speak inside of him.
I looked down at his face. It was all round and caked in blood and sweat.
“Here,” I whispered, placing the bottle of whiskey on his bed. “Have a drink with me. We’ll stay up and talk this all out.”
“No,” Junior replied softly. “It’s too late. It’s already too late.”
“Too late?” I tried to smile. “What are you talking about, too late?”
“Don’t you see, Luce, we’ve already made our mistakes. The worst mistakes anyone can make. Nothing can make us whole again.”
Big Junior Breen was trembling. He began to cry again, burying his face into the side of the bed.
“Junior …” I started to whisper. But there was nothing else I could say. I reached out my hand and patted him on his back, then stepped away and into my room.
I lay down on the bed. I tried to close my eyes. I thought about the letters on Junior’s arm all night. I could feel the wounds moving there within my own heart.
The draft along the wall kept shaking the Virgin Mary’s frame and I could hear Junior crying and mumbling to himself until sometime in the morning when I finally fell asleep.
In that early-morning light, Junior pulled himself up off the floor. He lifted the Virgin Mary painting off the wall and took all the things he had hidden there. He strode out of his room and down the hall and outside and down to the banks of the Boneyard River.
Junior walked right to the edge of the river, clopping through the high brown grass. His boots were full of mud now. He was sweating a little as the sun began to peek out over the trees and reflect down on the shiny blue-green river as it muddled on past. Junior squatted in place, staring as the water rushed up to the ends of his boots. Then he placed each object—the twine, the baby bird’s eyeballs (he threw the dictionary and the knife)—one by one and watched them drift and disappear down the river, sinking and growing darker as they vanished beneath the wake. Then he held the photograph of
EUNICE
in his big hands, smearing it with all the sweat and grease from his fingertips. He took a deep breath and placed it along the water’s rippling edge, then pulled his hand away. The photograph took off, sailing downstream, twisting and turning as it moved along beside the bank. Junior gave a little whimper, then shook his head and chased after it, whimpering and murmuring as it sailed downstream, disappearing farther and farther down the bank. The picture could not go. He needed her face.
“Mmph,” Junior whispered, getting his shoes all muddy and wet. He nearly tripped over a wet log and some high bank grass that itched beside his waist, fighting to keep the photograph in sight. He scrambled down the river’s bank and lunged, slipping into the river up to his thick knees, catching the tiny gray image in his big white hand. He looked at it quickly, then stuck it in his shirt pocket and pulled himself out of the river, huffing and heaving as the cold water soaked through his clothes.
“Looks like you fell in all right, mister,” a little voice bloomed. Junior looked up and gave a little smile to a tiny girl in a pink dress a few feet away who was sailing a little boat on the end of a string.
“Looks that way.” Junior frowned, staring at his wet clothes. His shoes squeaked with water as he stepped down the bank.
“Is it cold?” the little girl asked.
“Sure is.” Junior frowned again. “You best stay out of it.”
“I aim to.” The girl smiled. “But my boat sure likes it a lot.”
“Looks like it does, all right.”
“My name’s Mary Margo Underlein. I live down the road.”
“Is that so? My name’s Junior. Junior Breen.”
“That’s a silly name.” Mary Margo smiled.
“It sure is. I pray for a new one every night but it just hasn’t come yet.”
“My dad says I got to pray every night before bed to get the things I want. He says I gotta hold my hands together tight and pray for all the things I need, and if it’s a good thing, it’s bound to come true.”
“Your daddy sounds like a smart man.”
“He is. He built me this boat and painted it yellow. That takes smarts to do.”
“I’ll say.” Junior smiled. Then he looked up and froze where he stood. There was the sheriff sitting in his squad car, shaking his head to himself real slow, shaking his head and mumbling something. He had been watching Junior all along. Junior looked away, feeling the sweat bead along the back of his neck. He stared out across the water to the sailboat, feeling the heat of the sheriff ’s gaze upon his bones.
“Look at it go,” Mary Margo giggled.
The little yellow boat sailed along, drifting downstream, creating a tiny wake as it passed. Junior patted the girl on the head with a frown.
“I have to go now.”
“Why?” Mary Margo asked.
“Just do, sweetheart.”
“Can’t you stay for a little while longer? I’ll let you sail the boat if you want.”
“Sorry, kiddo. I’ve got to go now.”
“You have to go to work or something?”
“That’s exactly where I have to go.”
“Don’t forget to say your prayers tonight.” She smiled.
“How’s that?” Junior asked.
“Before you go to bed tonight. Don’t forget to say ’em so you get yourself a new name.”
“I won’t.” He patted her soft straw hair again and walked away, staring up into the empty space where the sheriff ’s squad car had been. He headed down the road hoping he left no wake where his feet moved, holding the photograph in his hand as he walked toward work, not leaving a trace of his own weight upon the ground.
How far Charlene and I would tread from making it secretly in the backseat of her car to some sort of arranged relationship where we could manage to speak in a public way was as unsure as a poor nervous knock on her parent’s thick wood door. But I took that chance anyway. I marched right up their nice front walk and up their porch and knuckled a nervous little report on their door without receiving any invitation at all.
“Is Charlene home?” I asked as soon as Mrs. Dulaire had the front door opened. Her bottom lip trembled a little as she gazed at my face. Mrs. Dulaire had raised six daughters and girded up the Used Car King of the Greater Southern Illinois Area. It had left little wrinkles around her pretty brown eyes and thin red lips. Those little lines of care made her seem sensitive and sweet as hell. But now her bottom lip would not stay in place.
“Charlene?” she murmured, still stunned. “’Course she is, Luce … just … one … moment … please …”
Mrs. Dulaire stared at me, then shook her head and backed away from the door. “Charlene!” she screamed, trying to swallow all the strange discomfort in her voice. “Charlene!!!” Mrs. Dulaire smiled and nodded again, looking at my face.
“She’ll be right down,” she whispered, cocking her head. She leaned against the thick white wood door, still peering at my face. “How have you been, Luce?” she asked. Mrs. Dulaire had always been nice to me. Mostly, she was just kind of crazy.
She never made me feel bad for being me, a farm boy without much chance in the world to do a lot other than ruin the daughters of nice folk like her. I suddenly felt bad for not saying hello to her the time she came in for gas.
But Mr. Dulaire was another story. He was a man who held me in the highest of contempt. “Who’s at the door, Virginia?” I heard him call from the smoking chair in the other room. “Is that Earl come to make up?”
I shook my head, trying to swallow all the spit down from my mouth.
“It’s Luce,” Mrs. Dulaire mumbled.
“How’s that?”
“It’s Luce,” she replied. “Luce Lemay. Here to see Charlene.” “What’s that?” he grumbled. I could hear the old man give a little grunt and pull himself out of his soft red chair and stroll on over to the front door. There he was all right. Mr. Milford Dulaire, the Used Car King, stared me hard in my face and nodded to himself. He wore a dull beige-and-brown sports jacket.
“Didn’t know you were back in town, Luce,” he said. “Thought you were still up in the tank.”
“I got out a little while ago,” I replied.
“That so? Is all that worked out now?”
“Reckon so.” I frowned and looked down at the faded black-and-red tattoos along my arms. They looked old.
“Good, good, glad to see you out,” he lied. His beige tie was making me ill. “So you find yourself a job yet?”
“I work nights over at the Gas-N-Go.” I smiled.
“That’s something.” He nodded. “So.” He tried to smile. “What is it you mean to see Charlene about?”
I stalled a little, taking a breath. “Just seeing if she planned on attending the fair tonight.”
“That so? Well, I don’t rightly know if she does or not.”
“Mean to ask her myself.” I grinned.
“Huh.” He frowned. “That you do, huh?”
He rubbed the bald spot on the top of his head and then leaned in close to me. “All right, Luce. What is it you want with Charlene?”
I stared him hard in the face.
“Why you gonna go and foul up the head of another one of my poor daughters on me?” Mr. Dulaire asked.
I just shook my head and stared at my feet.
“Milford!”
Mrs. Dulaire whispered. “Hush! You have to excuse Mr. Dulaire, Luce. He hasn’t been the same since they took his hunting license away.”
“That ain’t it, Virginia.” Mr. Dulaire frowned. “We just got a loyalty to Earl is all. He’s almost our son-in-law and we couldn’t just put him out like that.”
Mrs. Dulaire shook her pretty head in protest.
I frowned. “I understand.”
“Earl is a fine fellow by me.” Mr. Dulaire frowned. “I think he can make Charlene happy. I don’t think the same is true for you.”
I heard Charlene come pounding down the front stairs in a soft steady beat. I saw her glance at herself in the long hallway mirror and stick out her tongue at the reflection and skip on out toward the front door, frowning once she saw me and her old man squared off.
“Daddy, what’s going on?”
“Nothing, pumpkin. Me and Luce just having a little talk.
Isn’t that right, Luce? I think I made myself clear.”
“Yes, sir, you have.”
I turned and strode down their cement walk and out into the street. Charlene didn’t come chasing after me. The thick white door closed as I turned the corner and crossed the street. There was no way I was good enough for that girl and I knew it. I had no business knocking upon her door and upsetting her folks and trying to prove that I was something better than I was.
This was a feeling no Ferris wheel or goldfish toss or snow-cone in a thin paper cup could ever hope to fix. But me and Junior went on to the Corn Fair anyway. He said it would be good for a fool with a broken heart like me. Hell, ol’ Clutch was nice enough to let us close the gas station early so we could attend the festivities.
Then there was the Corn King and Queen. It was something like being in the homecoming or prom court. Two kids from the high school would be picked as the Corn King and Queen and got to ride on horseback through the town’s streets at the head of the Corn Parade, which generally consisted of the two squad cars in town, the three fire trucks, the mayor’s car, and some turn-of-the-century farm equipment driving down the main street to the tiny fairgrounds where the Corn Fair was always held.
“This is pitiful.” I frowned.
I ate some cotton candy as me and Junior walked through the fair. It was a nice night out. People were talking loud and laughing and some Dixie band was playing “Oh When the Saints” on a little wood bandstand and the Ferris wheel was spinning around and some farmers were looking at a red 1923 tractor some other farmer had rebuilt. Most people I didn’t seem to recognize, most people didn’t seem to recognize me either, and that was fine. We saw Clutch getting drunk in the little beer garden and L.B. was following some poor girls around, and there was all the people I had ever sold gasoline to, smiling and laughing and having the time of their lives.
“This is pitiful all right.” I frowned.
“C’mon, cheer up.” Junior smiled. “You must know plenty of girls here in town.”
“Know ’em, sure. But they haven’t got what I already got in a girl that’s too good for me.”
Junior shook his head and handed me some more pink cotton candy, tearing it from the white paper cone. He looked happy. For once in a long time, he looked like he was having a nice time.
“That’s not true, pal. You’re as good a guy as I’ve ever met. If it wasn’t for her folks, she might be here with you right now.”
“If it wasn’t for her folks, she probably woulda never stooped so low to date me in the first place. She probably dated me to give her lousy old man a heart attack, I bet.”
We walked to the center of the fairgrounds and stopped where the Corn King and Queen were standing and smiling and waving and wholeheartedly greeting everyone in town to this year’s Corn Fair. The Corn King was a pretty scrawny-looking kid with a big tuft of blond hair on his head and a dull look in his eyes and a huge horseshoe-shaped scar burned right on his left cheek. The kid’s name was Young Benny Bilk. He was the state’s all-around horseback riding champion for that particular year, but not much of a good-looking kid at that. He looked like he had been thrown or kicked in the head one too many times. He just kind of stood there and waved and mumbled hopelessly to himself.
Then there was the Corn Queen and her hair. It was like a little spell floated from her lips in each breath she exhaled. This girl was all the things that were good about that town, wrapped up in a puffy cornflower-blue dress and glass crown and her mother’s shiny high heels. The most remarkable thing about this girl was her hair. It stood straight up, full of pomade and waves upon waves of hair spray. It brought a smile right to my face seeing that girl, standing there waving and smiling and winking like a queen. If one bead of sweat was running down along her spine, she wouldn’t have let a single soul know.
Hope
. That’s what that girl had. Hope that she was as true as the whole town believed.
