Into the Great Wide Open (19 page)

After dinner, because they were supposed to, some prior arrangement that was opaque to Kenny, they went to Kim’s house. He can’t remember why. His own mood had been thrown into confusion by Junie’s college news, and by the excesses of the dinner; he felt loose-limbed, heavy, passive, ready to be taken downstream.

A cold clear winter night outside, more stars than Kenny could remember once they got out onto the parkway. He slouched down in the passenger seat of the Accord, staring up at them. “Life is good here in the suburbs,” he said. “You’ve even got extra stars out here.”

“Don’t start,” she said. “And sit up.”

“Why?”

“The seat belt would cut your head off if I had a wreck.” Kenny lolled sideways in the seat, so his head came to rest in her lap.

“Don’t,” she said, but he ignored her. I could sleep, he thought.
The firm yet supple outlines of her thighs
, he thought, quoting what?—old blue-cover pornography. Found in his father’s sock drawer, or passed around in junior high.
She turkey-trotted to another grunting, gasping orgasm
. Kenny slipped his hand under the hem of her skirt, to feel the bare skin underneath. “I’ll have a wreck,” she said.

He sat up but he didn’t take his hand away; instead, he let it wander up her leg, into the privacy of her lap. He glanced at the speedometer: sixty, sixty-five, somewhere between. “Don’t,” she
said; and Kenny heard her but it was like he didn’t hear her. He felt like he was dreaming. He let his hand stray higher, and he felt the dense, springy mat of her pubic hair under the cotton. She was already wet, he could feel it through the cloth.

“I mean it,” Junie said. “I’ll have a wreck.” But there was no particular force behind her words, and she didn’t make any move to stop or to move away. What? Neither of them had permission for this. He slipped the panties aside and stuck two fingers inside her and she said, Oh! and kept driving. Kenny didn’t touch her anywhere else. She sat up straight, in case anyone was watching: ten or ten-thirty, a sprinkling of cars but nothing much. She was as wet as he had ever felt her. He started to stroke her, softly at first and then harder, and then she was moving with him, small movements of her hips. Kenny turned to look at the road and almost wrecked it; she stopped, he felt her back away. He had to trust her. He turned back to watch her face, her eyes fixed forward on the road, and after a few seconds she started again, gently rocking, small sounds bubbling in the back of her throat. She was seeing less and less, Kenny knew that. It didn’t matter. He closed his own eyes and felt her rocking against his hand, the small movements getting ruder, harder, he felt himself reduced to the touch of her. His own dick was straining against the cloth of his jeans. The cage of her pelvic bone, the weight of her, harder and harder. “Oh, shit,” she said, “oh Jesus, Kenny,” and then he knew she wasn’t far. Almost opened his own eyes but he didn’t want to stop it; wanted to be inside her, suddenly more than anything, but it was impossible; and then it was too late. She started to come, a shudder that started as a trembling deep inside and spread, and he could feel it and wondered if they were going to die from it and saw that maybe that was the plan; maybe that was always the plan.

When he opened his eyes they were driving normally at about fifty-five down the parkway and Junie was fine, a deep red flush on her chest, her cheeks. “How did you do that?” Kenny asked.

“I didn’t mean to.”

He drew her hand over to his dick and she let it rest there for a second or two; then took it back and placed it on the steering wheel. She said, “That’s your problem, buddy.”

“I’ll whine,” Kenny said.

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t know either,” she said, “and I don’t I want to think about it. You started this.”

“There’s a rest stop or a turnout, something,” Kenny said.

“We could get arrested.”

“We could figure something out,” he said. “You missed your turnoff anyway.”

“Jesus, Kenny,” she said, and she was angry again. “Why is this always such a fucking bargain? I come and then you have to come, except it isn’t the other way around. Why can’t you just leave it alone for now?”

She was scared: scared of what they were doing, what they might do. Maybe she was right to be.

But it was too late to stop. “It’s OK,” he said softly. “There’s a place to pull off a little ways up.”

“You’re not even listening to me.”

“Please,” he said; and it was nothing in the words but the way he said it that moved her. She glanced at him, suspicious. Then
against her better judgment
pulled the red car off into the turnout. This was going to be all Kenny’s fault. He didn’t mind. There were parking places, a mysterious building, always locked. Kenny had been here before, or another place that was identical. A path down to the river? They locked the car and left it and in the moonlight—a little less than half a moon, not quite enough to see by—Kenny found the path, where it led into the woods. The leaves of the bushes were bright in the moonlight, the path a dark opening between them, leading nowhere. “Where are we going?” Junie asked.

“I don’t know,” Kenny said; leading her by the hand, stumbling over rocks and roots in his black city shoes, rundown. It was cold. The ground was clear of snow, but the mud was frozen into ruts and humps and old footprints; other people had been this way before; the thought caused a sadness in Kenny that he couldn’t explain. That stale, used-up … she leaned against the trunk of an oak tree, at the edge of a little clearing in the moonlight, he could see her against the rough bark, and she stepped out of her panties and then he was inside, under her skirt, the unbelievable fact of her warm pussy under all those clothes and all that cold night and Kenny shot off almost as soon as he was inside her and they stood there resting against the tree, her legs around him, her back pressed into the bark of the tree. He was still inside her. The feeling came back over him again, of all the others who had been there before, who had littered these woods with their used rubbers; but this was different, a sacrament, skin to skin. No protection. Kenny’s knees started to tremble from the weight of both of them and she slipped away from him, back into herself; back onto the ground, supporting herself, away inside her clothes.

“Steady there, soldier,” Junie said. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m cold,” he said; although he wasn’t cold. What? Angelic visitation, something. He was
lit up
with love for her; he was the burning bush itself, the flaming sword, the tongue of fire. He looked around the small moonlit clearing, the river flowing somewhere close by the sound of it, the intermittent cars on the parkway; and Kenny thought that she had come with him; she had been afraid but went along anyway, that if he said go, she would go with him. Love he could touch, love that had weight and consequence. Holding her against him. Leaning against the tree himself, now, with his coat open and Junie wrapped in it, her back to him. He tasted the short hair on the back of her head, felt the warm belly under the layers of cloth.

“You’re crazy,” Junie said. And the fact that she could say this, the idea that she trusted him …

A cop was waiting in the parking lot when they got back, a park policeman shining his searchlight into the empty driver’s seat of the Accord. He got out of his car as Junie unlocked the door of theirs. “This your car?” asked the cop.

No, thought Kenny, don’t get sarcastic. The temptation was almost more than she could resist, either of them: we were just walking down the parkway, trying these keys in every car we saw … At the same time, he was scared. What if he had caught them, come looking for them?

“Did we do something wrong?” Junie asked.

“You’re not supposed to park in here after ten,” the cop said. “There’s a sign on the way in and another one right there.” He shined the flashlight on a brown enamel sign ten feet in front of Junie’s car,
NO PARKING 10 P.M.–6 A.M.

“Shit,” Kenny said. “I mean, shoot.” He tried to think if he was drunk, what the rules were. The cop scowled at him.

“Can I ask what you were doing in here?” the cop said.

“We were looking at the moonlight,” Junie said. Kenny wanted to kiss her for it: she was so calm and clear, so matter-of-fact, like anyone with half a brain would be out looking at moonlight tonight.

“You went down to the river?” the cop said.

“Not all the way,” Junie said.

“You should go down to the river sometime. I mean, before ten o’clock.” He shut off his searchlight and the three of them stood around in the dark for a minute, their eyes adjusting to the moonlight again. The cop said, “Why don’t you go ahead on, then. Next time, I’m going to have to give you a ticket, though.”

“Thank you, officer,” Junie said.

“Don’t mention it,” he said, and let himself back into his patrol car. “You drive careful.”

Junie let herself into the car and then Kenny, the cop waiting for them; and Kenny saw how lightly she was getting off, and something started in him. Something that he hated, it was Junie but it was in her, she was part of it: the life of ease, of privilege. While everything stuck to Kenny. If he had been the driver, he would be on his way to jail by then. And Oregon: a clean place, like Sweden or something. Junie would lose herself in the smell of the leaves, the good clean white Christian smell of the mountains. She would hike, she would ski. She would have a high grade point average and good teeth and Kenny would be doing something else, he didn’t know what. Poor boy, Kenny thought. Although he wasn’t poor, not exactly. Poor boy in wornout shoes and a green coat; imposter in the adult world, in the city of happiness, the place where early
promise
was fulfilled, where
potential
became
kinetic
. She put her hand on his leg as they drove away and Kenny covered it with his own; like he was trying to hold her near, when really he wanted, at that moment, to push her away.

His father came home in a big white ambulance, they lit the flashing lights on top as they disembarked him, as if to alert the neighborhood: Elvis is back. Kenny did the honor of pushing him up the new ramp, into the living room, where a rented hospital bed took pride of place in front of the color Sony. (His father always bought for durability: Sony, Maytag, the last slant-6 from Dodge.)

Kenny didn’t understand until the ambulance drove away and he was alone with his father. “Could you get me some ice cream?” his father asked.

Kenny went to the kitchen to spoon it out for him. His father always had a terrific sweet tooth when he wasn’t drinking; Kenny supposed the two were connected. The noise of the TV pursued him into the kitchen, back talk and laughter. Let’s get sarcastic. It was about four or four-thirty in the afternoon and Kenny thought, you’ll
ruin your appetite for dinner. He caught himself thinking this. Then realized that he was alone, that there was absolutely nobody else who was going to take care of his father. A shivering ran down his neck; a quick desire to run away, though he knew it was already too late.

“I’ve got some schoolwork to do,” he told his father; true enough, though he hadn’t kept up in anything but English for a couple of months, not since his father’s accident. Let’s see, Kenny thought, about eight weeks worth of reading, a couple of math quizzes, I’ll be caught right up. He said, “I’ll be upstairs.”

“Can you hear me up there?” his father asked in his new voice, tremulous and blurry.

“Sure. Turn the TV down and I can hear you.”

“I can hear it perfectly well,” his father said, “but I have a hard time making it out, you know? What they’re saying and so on. I can’t follow it.”

“Well, just give a yell if you need anything.”

“I’m going to have to use the bathroom in a minute. I’m OK for now but I’m going to need a hand.”

And Kenny saw that he was not exaggerating or making a statement or putting over something on Kenny. His father needed help to go to the bathroom and there was nobody else. Kenny left him propped upright in the hospital bed and went up to his room, where the afternoon sun was walking slowly across the walls, casting a shadow of the window casement. The sound of the TV followed him even up here. If Kenny left, his father would be helpless, alone. He
knew
this before the ambulance left but he didn’t
realize
it. Kenny sat on the bed and rolled a cigarette. He wasn’t supposed to smoke but there was nobody to tell him not to; Kenny ran the house now. It didn’t matter if he got caught. There was nobody to catch him. They weren’t even sure if his father had a sense of smell anymore.

He let his eyes rest on the book he was supposed to be reading for English,
Slaughterhouse-Five
. Billy Pilgrim, poo-tee-weet. Maybe
if he smoked a little more dope. As it was the book seemed to be constantly agreeing with itself. It wasn’t long or dense but still he couldn’t seem to finish it, or even start. A sense of futility.

“Ken?” his father called to him. “Kenny?”

Another victory like this, he thought, and we are done for.

It’s another thing he can’t remember, can’t figure out either, why they went to Kim’s house that same night; the night of the dinner, of Junie’s high-speed sex experience, moonlight, and policemen. They must have had enough, both of them. But for some reason they couldn’t break the appointment; and in fact it wasn’t all that late when they got there, not even eleven o’clock.

Kenny had a bad feeling, like something was going to happen, although he was almost sure it wasn’t. If Junie was ever going to talk about Kim, about what did or didn’t happen with her, about the feelings that Junie may or may not have had, she would have taken her chance before then. Maybe when they were married, Kenny thought; then wondered where the marriage part had come from. He saw them, twenty years later, looking placidly back from their bland suburban living room … a made-to-order life, straight out of the Sears catalog.

They parked on a street of ordinary houses, somewhere close to the river. Junie led him down the driveway of the one house that was different, an old farmhouse set back from the road, in a little scrap of woods. It was hard to see in the dark but Kenny got the impression of windows, and of shutters, of porches and ells, a house that had grown organically in small disorganized projects. She led him up to the door like this was nothing strange; maybe it wasn’t. She knocked but she didn’t wait, just led him in. A set of parents were displayed in the living room, Kim’s presumably: a round, gray-headed woman with a monk’s bowl haircut, and a drawn-looking thin man with an oxygen pipe going into his nose. Liberals, Kenny thought; a roomful of
books and magazines, no TV, natural fibers. They leapt up when Junie came into the room, or the mother did; the father straggled upright, tangled in the hoses.