If Jack's in Love (7 page)

“I have to go,” she told us.

“Meet me tomorrow at the creek,” my brother said.

“What creek?”

“Just cut through. It's on the other side of the hill.”

“Anya, who are you talking to?”

“I have to go.”

“I'll be at the creek at three,” Stan said.

She walked off in her sandals and tight shorts and my brother watched her from behind with his low-class insolence.

I wanted to get out of there. Lovey was on the back porch standing on her tiptoes so she could see us, and here was my brother in possession of marijuana. And no doubt Reedy was at large, poking his nose into everyone's business. What if Lovey went inside and called him?

We returned to the creek and hung out until my brother came down some.

I was monitoring his high with great anxiety. He made me promise not to tell Mom and Pop he was on drugs. And I didn't tell them. But I wanted to. And the next day he went without me to the creek. He was there at three in the afternoon. He waited for a while, and just when he was about to give up Anya came brushing through the woods from the street side. She told him that if she'd entered the woods from the yard her mother would have seen and called her back.

Stan passed her a joint and she toked on it like she'd been using drugs all her life.

He told me about it that evening. After they got high they made out for a while and he felt her breasts.

I was stunned. I figured my brother had been setting himself up for a fall. I thought he was making coarse, untrue assumptions about Anya, and about girls in general.

I was wrong.

MY BROTHER HAD PICKED UP some of the new hippie expressions, like “far out,” “outasight,” and “dig it.” A few of these had already gained wary currency in our neighborhood; others were provided by the groovier television shows. Only recently Stan had hollered, “Sock it to me, baby!” and dashed across the room to sweep my mother in his arms. “Give me a hug, foxy lady! Come on, you sexy chick, hug me tighter!”

I marveled at his brazenness. Who else ever told their mother she was sexy? I mean, wow. The boy had charm—sometimes. (Poor Mom would accept flirting wherever she found it, except from Mr. Harris at the Ben Franklin.)

Stan had the longest hair in the neighborhood, maybe in town. Hair length was a contest among the boys in the neighborhood; most lost out when their parents lugged them to the barbershop. But Pop, he was indifferent to the controversies other dads raged about. He just didn't care that much, and Stan's hair kept on growing. When you saw hair as long as his it was on garage band record covers or maybe on the hippies out in San Francisco. It wasn't typical in our town, and it drew stares of disapproval whenever we passed by in our smashed-up Ford. “Doesn't that just show you,” the old folks would say. “You can't expect people with a car that looks like that to control their teenagers.”

During the course of the year Stan grew his hair so long he almost wasn't allowed to graduate, even though the principals were eager to get rid of him; but after he threatened to turn it into a constitutional issue, they decided not to press the matter. It was dawning on people that the war against long hair was over. Soon they would give up on rock and roll and drugs. After that it would be Vietnam, civil rights, homosexuals, pornography. The news kept arriving through our television screens. The world was happening out there, if not in El Dorado Hills: drugs like the planet had never seen, orgiastic music, interracial shenanigans, crazy long-haired gatherings—flowers and dancing and girls blowing bubbles!

Not so long ago, maybe eight or nine months back, my brother had been bawling his eyes out over Courtney Blankenship. That mad affair had lasted one brief season, long enough to scandalize the neighborhood and cause Mr. Blankenship (he of
Ahoy, Mateys
) to seek professional counseling for his daughter. For three breathtaking months the romance between Stan and Courtney was the talk of El Dorado Hills. Courtney lost many of her best friends, and didn't seem to care. What in the world was she thinking? Perhaps El Dorado Hills had been too negligent of my brother's sinewy physicality and Jim Morrison curls. Maybe. But after I saw him bawling over a girl he didn't seem so tough. Actually, it gave me a little heart, seeing my brother vulnerable and crying. But that period passed, and now he scorned Courtney Blankenship for being plastic, square and uptight. Derisively he sneered when he heard her name. He called her “Suzy Creamcheese”—a cocktease, a whore, “the slut goddess of El Dorado Hills.” When he learned Gaylord Joyner had already broken up with her he laughed out loud. Not that it softened him towards Gaylord. On the contrary. It was as though Gaylord's sole purpose in pursuing Courtney had been to break his heart, and that was a crime he would never forget.

What this meant was, I couldn't talk to my brother about Myra. Joyners were Joyners, and he hated them all. Besides, he'd grown too cavalier about love to sympathize with romantic feelings. “Let me tell you about chicks, they want it as much as guys but they can't admit it. When they find out they like it, it freaks 'em out, see? Especially when they like getting it from a hippie dog like me. Chicks around here can't deal with their instincts. That's why I dig Anya, she knows exactly where it's at.”

Profane talk like that made me hesitate to utter Myra's name in his presence. When had he become a hippie dog, anyway?

There didn't seem to be a soul I could confide to. Mom had been burned too many times to think any good would come of love. Her hope was that I'd find some nice ugly girl, after I turned thirty. As for my going with Myra, that would be reaching for the stars, and she'd never encourage such overweening vanity. Which left two potential confidants: my only friend, Dickie Pudding, and Pop. Dickie Pudding was out, because it would be all over town faster than a telegram if I breathed a single word to him about Myra Joyner. And Pop was too manly to have much regard for feelings. So I locked up my dreams and walked alone.

One afternoon I strolled to the Ben Franklin to see if Mom would loan me a dollar (she wouldn't). As I was leaving the store I decided, on impulse, to visit Gladstein.

Gladstein was the only person who knew about Myra and me—Gladstein, of all people. How had it come about? And yet I was still a little timid around him.

I stopped before his shop window, pretending to browse his display. When I casually raised my eyes, I saw him behind the counter, grinning like a demon and waving me in.

The prissy bell above his door tinkled when I opened it.

“How's it going, little Witcher?”

It was humid and tomblike in the shop, and it smelled subtly of linked meat.

“Did you give her the ring?” He waited happily, his grin parting the bristles of his goatee.

“No sir, I tried to but she wouldn't take it.”

The grin vanished and he fingered his whiskers. “I don't get it, it's a nice ring.”

He pulled the drawer over his lap. “Let's see what else we have.”

“I can't buy another ring, I don't have any money.”

“So trade that one in.”

He had piles of jewels in there, rattling and jingling, and he kept waving his hands over them. I wouldn't have been surprised if a turbaned muscleman had appeared and granted me three wishes.

“She said she won't take a ring from me. My pop beat up Mr. Kellner and now our name is mud.”

“Like the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth, his name has been Mudd ever since.”

Gladstein let out a hoot of laughter, but I got the joke only later, when I thought about it.

His face grew serious.

“Why did your father beat up Paul Kellner?”

“Kellner said Pop tried to hit his dog with his car. But it's not true, Rusty ran in front of it. He's kind of a dumb dog.”

Gladstein nodded. “That's a serious charge, trying to kill a dog.” He owned three white mutts, Peek Shoos, Yatzis, some name like that. I'd observed them yapping through the rear window of his Continental many times. Otherwise I didn't know a thing about his domestic arrangements. I didn't even know if he had a wife.

“Boy, you know, I don't know what I'd do if someone tried to hurt my dogs. I just don't know.”

“Pop didn't try to hurt anyone's dog.”

“Of course not, I'm just pondering human motive. Well, Witcher. We have to do something about you and Myra Joyner. Have you kissed her yet?”

“Oh no. She would never let me kiss her.” I asserted this solemnly. “All I want is to talk to her. Maybe I can kiss her later.”

“No-no-no-no-no-no,” Gladstein said. “First you kiss her. You have the rest of your life to talk to her.”

“I don't know about that, she hasn't been that friendly to me since Pop beat up Mr. Kellner.”

I trailed my finger across the counter. He was a weird guy, but at least he let me talk about her.

“Witcher,” he said, “look at me.”

Unwillingly I met his eyes. He held them on me for a long time, making sure I understood their gravity. They tended lugubriously downwards, hanging above pendulous bags of flesh.

“Do you want to kiss her?”

“Yes,” I said. The sibilance I placed on the trail of the word took me by surprise. Do we know ourselves? Are we privy to our own impulses? All I had wanted up to that moment was to spend time with Myra, to speak with her. That's all.

“Listen to me. If you want to kiss her you can't think of anything else. Imagine kissing her. Form a picture in your mind. Meditate on it and it will come true.”

He turned to the trinkets in his drawer and ran his hands through them. He was muttering, speaking.... I think he was talking to his jewels.

I popped my knuckles, looked around.

By and by he returned to me.

“You have to learn how to use your mind. Anything you want you can have. It's all in your power, you just have to want it.”

“Yes sir.”

“Don't ‘Yes sir' me. Listen to what I'm saying.”

“I am listening.”

“But you aren't believing. Do you have the ring?”

“Yes sir,” I said. It was in my pocket. (It never left my pocket.)

“Give it to me.”

I did, and Gladstein replaced it with a golden band that had a ruby-red stone glinting in its middle.

“What's this for?”

“It's a trade. Take it instead. Give it to Myra.”

“You sure it's okay?”

“Witcher. Listen. Picture the girl in your mind. Don't let that image go away. Stay focused. And keep this ring in your pocket. It is magic. When you give it to her she will let you kiss her.”

Filmy sweat had covered me. The smell of linked meat grew stronger. I remembered the red demon on the sausage can. I couldn't meet Gladstein's eyes.

Tiny whimpers came from the rear of the store, breaking the tomb-quiet spell.

“My babies are waking up.”

“Your dogs? You bring them to work?”

“You've seen my dogs?”

“I see them in your car sometimes.”

“Okay. Tell me what you're gonna do.”

“When?”

“When you see Myra.”

“Kiss her,” I intoned.

Gladstein smiled. A gleam was in his eye. “And you're going to give her this ring.”

“Yes sir.”

“Next time I see you you'll tell me that. We'll laugh about it, we'll have a good time. But I don't want to see you 'til you've kissed her, understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“Witcher. Look at me. Stop looking away.”

He stared at me with his baggy eyes. I tried to keep mine level.

“The will is in the eyes. Do you understand?”

I nodded. I didn't understand. I didn't know what the hell he was doing.

“Good. Now go.”

I turned.

My feet were reluctant. I had all sorts of questions. But I didn't know what to ask. I moved towards the door in a fugue state.

The rest of the day passed in a dream. Could it be Gladstein was a demon? And yet he seemed to be on my side. He was rooting for me. He wanted me to kiss Myra.

I mentioned him to my mother that evening, in a tone of idle curiosity. I was passing his shop, I said. I went in to look at something and had a chat with the man.

Pop was napping on the carmine sofa.

She gazed at the window and said, softly, “He's Jewish, you know, but he sure has a beautiful voice.”

I went to the bathroom and examined the ring and its red stone. I clenched my eyes to form a mental image of Myra. And something miraculous happened. Myra appeared. She was in the bathroom with me. I could smell her talcum. I could see the down on her cheek. I wanted to kiss her. She said, “Yes! Yes!”

And I kissed her.

I stepped into the hallway. My fingers were trembling. What just happened had scared me. I paced until my mother asked what I was doing.

I didn't want to go to my bedroom because my brother was in there listening to his wild funky music.

I slipped outside.

Immediately a cold dog nose nudged my bare shin: Rusty.

I walked in the dusky light to Lewis Street with Rusty trotting beside me. The older kids were out, sitting on their porches and riding their bikes. Through the dusky air cicadas and frogs and crickets were croaking with all their might, as if engaged in a talent competition. Bats swooped angular against the pale glow of the sky. I reached the Kellner house and Rusty slowed down, disappointed that I'd brought him home. Then I moved along, glancing furtively at the house next door, where Myra lived.