Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (18 page)

The next day I told Schwartz what had happened.

“Y'mean
she
asked
you
to a
party? You?”
He practically reeled.

“Yup.”

“Boy, them Polish parties are really wild. Casimir told me about one once that went on for four days.”

All day in school I drifted on a plane of ecstasy, floating high above the humdrum dronings of history teachers. All through geometry I wrote Josie, Josie, Josie in parabolic curves on the back of my notebook.

That night I began to plan my wardrobe. I laid the stuff out on my bed, checking it carefully. Let's see, I'll use the Old Man's Aqua Velva, and….

The next essential was getting my father to let me use the car. A car was absolutely necessary for the operation that was beginning to evolve in my mind. In Indiana, male kids usually start driving at about ten, so I was an accomplished gravel-thrower and was well known at all the local drive-ins hamburger joints from Big Blimpie to the Route 41 Diner.

“Uh … Dad. Is there any chance of getting the Olds Thursday?” He was deep in the sports page, which I figured was as good a time as any to hit him for the car.

“Thursday?” He squinted at me, blowing smoke through his nose and letting it curl up in front of his eyes like a shifting curtain. If I hadn't known that he hated movies, I'd have sworn that he studied under Humphrey
Bogart. For all I know, Humphrey Bogart studied under him. The old man got around.

“Thursday … let's see. Thursday. What am I doin' Thursday?” He talked aloud to himself, toying with me. I knew Wednesday was his league bowling night and on Fridays he went to the wrestling matches with Gertz and Zudock. Saturday was usually up for grabs, with my mother usually winning when they drove over to visit her friend Bernice and her dumb husband, Elmer, who worked for the phone company.

“What do you have in mind for Thursday?” he asked, folding the paper over so that he could read the scores of the various bowling leagues. His life revolved around three things—the Chicago White Sox, bowling and the Oldsmobile, the order depending on the season.

“Well? What d'ya want the car for?”

Naturally I couldn't tell him what I
really
wanted it for. “Me and Schwartz are going to the Whiting game at the civic center, and Schwartz's old man's Ford is up on blocks.”

“Whiting'll kill ya. That Zodnycki's got a jump shot from the keyhole that you can't block, and he hits from the outside, too. They'll murder you guys.”

“Yeah?” was all I could say, knowing that the old man was probably right and also that I wouldn't be anywhere near the game, if things went right.

“OK. But be sure to fill the tank. Not like the last time, so you run out of gas in Blue Island and me and Heinie hafta chase all over the place before we find ya. If that wasn't stupid, tryin' to make it to Chicago and
back on a gallon of Shell regular. Leave it to you and Schwartz.”

He had opened an old wound: the memory of that miserable night when Schwartz had supplied a gallon of gas and I had supplied the car on a disastrous double date that ended with the four of us sitting in the car on a railroad siding at 15 below zero for two and a half hours. The two girls hadn't spoken to us then or since, and I didn't blame them.

“Don't worry. I'll fill it up. I learned my lesson.”

“Yeah, I'll bet,” was all he said as he went back to the scores.

Well, that took care of that. It was humiliating, but I had the car; that was the big thing. I went to my room and sat down at the desk that I used for my homework. My Aunt Glenn gave it to me for my eighth birthday. It was robin's-egg bue and had yellow bunnies painted on the side. I figured one day I'd paint it red or green, since the bunnies were beginning to be embarrassing. My aunt had a thing about bunnies. For every Christmas as long as I could remember, she'd given me bunny slippers and no doubt I'd get another pair this year, even though my shoe was a half-size bigger than my old man's.

I made out a list of what I had to do:

1. Get haircut.
   
2. Polish car.
   
3. Buy gas.
   
4. Gargle.
   
5. Squeeze blackheads.
   

The next day, which was Wednesday, was dark and windy with a lot of snow drifting down all afternoon. We had an auditorium session in which Jack Morton and Glen Atkinson and some other guy dressed up like Wise Men while our crummy glee club sang
We Three Kings of Orient Are.

“Boy, you sure are gonna miss one hell of a ball game,” said Flick as we hitchhiked home from school that night. “That better be some babe.”

I said nothing, since it was obvious that Flick was jealous that I had a date with the greatest-looking girl for miles around. For a couple of days now there had been churning inside of me a molten excitement that was getting so hot I could hardly stand it. Every time I thought of her, it started again. I can't explain why, since I hardly knew her, but maybe that's the reason. You never feel that way over somebody you really know.

“Didja hear Zodnycki said the Wildcats are a bunch of overrated punks, and that he and four girls could beat 'em goin' away? I read it in the
Times,”
Schwartz chipped in, blowing his breath in a big cloud as the cars rumbled past us. We were part of a tiny contingent of diehards who always hitchhiked the three miles back and forth to school, not only to save our bus money but also out of principle.

“That bum'll be lucky if he cans five points against Sobec,” I answered, trying to sound like I cared about the game.

“Ah, I dunno. That bastard must be eight feet tall. And he looks like he's about 40 years old,” Flick yelled
over the roar of a passing diesel. He spoke the truth. Northern Indiana high school teams often resemble the best the Big Ten can field; 300-pound tackles, blue-jowled and squinty-eyed, are common. Their actual ages are as hard to tell as the sex of a clam. There are rumors that many promising players are not even enrolled in first grade till their 17th year, and by the time they're high school sophomores are grizzled veterans with large families and pro contracts from four leagues.

“Watch this baby.” Schwartz waggled his thumb seductively as a knock-kneed Buick rattled toward us. It slowed to a stop. “GOT ‘IM!” Schwartz hollered.

We piled into the amiable wreck, which was driven by a mammoth steelworker who was fragrant with beer and chewing tobacco. He spit a long amber skein out the window into the frigid air.

“If yer gonna get in, get in. I ain't got all day!”

The uproar inside the Buick was deafening. No muffler, bad shocks and a transmission that sounded as if it were made of a million cracked iron marbles. The floor of the car was ankle-deep in beer cans, cigar butts and rags—a real working car.

“Hey, Schwartz!” Flick yelled over the din.

“Yeah?”

“D' ya think Ace here is gonna score tonight?”

“I hear them Polish girls invented sex!” shouted Flick.

“You guys are just jealous!” I yelled as I struggled to keep from falling off the seat.

At that moment, I became aware that the driver was
peering intently into his cracked rearview mirror right at me. At the time, it had no meaning.

Just as we climbed out at the end of the roaring ride, the steel puddler spit another stream of tobacco juice and hollered over the clatter of his valves:

“You guys go to high school?”

“Yeah,” Schwartz answered for all of us.

“You don't know when you're well off.”

He spat again and drove off. It was a point we weren't prepared to accept. It was just before the dawn of the age of youth culture, and being a kid was just something you went through before joining the real world.

“Y' comin' over to the Red Rooster tomorrow night after your date?” Flick asked me. The Red Rooster was where everyone who was with it went after a big night.

“Are you kiddin', Flick?” said Schwartz, jabbing him in the ribs with a mitten. “He's gonna have a lot more to do besides sit around and eat cheeseburgers, right?”

“Now look, you guys, I don't know what you're thinkin' I'm gonna do, but.…” I tried to inject a note of dignity into the discussion.

“Don't worry. We know what you're gonna
try
to do. Oh boy! If I had a date with that doll, lemme tell you….” Flick winked a large, lascivious wink.

“Don't worry. I can handle whatever comes up.” More elbows in the ribs. I played the game.

I plodded home. There was time before supper to back the car out of the garage in the frigid air and to
give her a coat of Duco Seven if I worked fast. I had polished that car so many times that I could do it in my sleep. I was already deep in the middle of a torrid embrace in my mind when I became aware, as my right arm buffed the hood, that a hulking shadow had darkened the gloom around me. It blotted out the distant glow of the open-hearth furnaces against the lowering clouds. As I glanced up, a rasping voice set my teeth on edge. “Hey!”

A thrill of fear zipped through me. “Uh … yeah?” I managed to squeak, dropping my polishing rag into the slush.

“You the kid takin' Josie t' tha pardy t'morra?”

“Yeah.”

“I t'ought so.” He was wearing a checkered wool jacket about the size of a circus tent. He had on red earmuffs and no hat. He had a crewcut that looked like steel wool.

“Who're you?” I asked. It was a dangerous question, but I couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Whatsit to ya?” He leaned with one hand the size of a 12-pound ham on the fender of the Olds. I didn't like the way the conversation was going, and I wondered if I should make a break for the back door.

“I'm ‘er brudder. I jus' t'ought I oughta see who was goin out wit' Josie.”

“Oh. Yeah. I heard of you. She's a nice girl. She sure is a nice girl. Yeah.”

Words kept squirting out of me. He reminded me of
Alice the Goon from the Popeye comic strip. I could smell the faint aroma of a locker room.

“You play football,” I said, trying to make contact.

“Dat's right, she's a nice girl.” He ignored my latest remark as being too obvious to answer.

“Yep. She sure is. A real nice girl. Yep.”

“You show her a nice time, y' hear? An if anybuddy gives ya any trouble, tell em ya know Stosh.” He made a sound that I guess was a laugh. It sounded like two angle irons clanking together.

“I
sure will … Stosh.”

He clanked again and shambled off into the darkness. I noticed that he had left a dent the size of an elephant's footprint in the fender of the Olds. I should have taken the hint.

Later that night at Pulaski's, I waited my turn amid a crowd of ladies who milled around the meat counter, watching Pulaski as he weighed pork chops. He was famous for his two-pound thumb.

“I said didn't want 'em so fatty!” bellowed a hulking lady in a stocking cap.

“Whaddaya want from me, lady? I don't grow the pigs!”

An angry murmur arose among the throng as Pulaski held them at bay with his cleaver. Howie struggled past me, carrying a sack of potatoes on his shoulder.

“I hear you're goin' to the party,” he said out of the side of his mouth as he hurried past

“How'd you know?” I threw after him.

“I hear,” he answered.

Finally, as I picked up my sack of groceries, Howie leaned over the counter and said: “You're takin' Josie, eh? Well, good luck.” He said it in a kind of voice that could mean anything.

“Thanks,” I answered in the same voice. He looked tired, as though he had worked 18 hours that day, which he had.

Sure enough, I met Josie on the way home again. This time she hung on my arm and brushed up against me as we struggled home with the grocery sacks.

“I hear you met Stosh.” She spoke in a husky, throaty voice, not at all like her brother's.

“He came over when I was polishing the car.”

“You'll like him.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You'll like my uncles, too. They want to meet you.” She snuggled closer as we sloshed through the slush. Somewhere a radio was playing
White Christmas,
with old Bing Crosby crooning away. We never really had a white Christmas in northern Indiana, since the snow came down already gray from the steel mills, but it was a nice thought. Once in a while we had a fall of rust-colored snow, and that could be kind of pretty once you got used to it

“Especially you'll like my uncle Stanley.”

“Yeah, that'll be great.” Inside my gut, those roaring waves of excitement crashed so loud that I didn't realize how sinister it was that all her uncles wanted to meet me. The streetlights played over her magnificent cheekbones, her fantastic eyes, her coal-black hair. I felt hints
of her body, round and soft, through her corduroy parka and my sheepskin coat I clutched desperately to my bag of groceries.

The great Atlantic salmon struggling thousands of miles upstream, leaping waterfalls, battling bears to mate is nothing compared to your average high school sophomore. The salmon dies in the attempt, and so, often, does the sophomore, in more ways than one. As we ambled on through the gloom, I didn't have the slightest hint of what was coming; neither, I suppose, does the salmon, just does what he has to do. So did I.

“Hey,” I said just before we got to her house. “Where is this party going to be?”

She looked into my eyes with that gland-tingling look that can drive a man out of his skull—if he's lucky.

“It's a surprise. You'll have fun.”

Instantly I pictured a mysterious, blue-lit den somewhere with writhing bodies and the distant thudding of orgiastic drums. Her smoldering gaze promised everything. I felt deep-down stirrings, and I was glad it was dark. A few snowflakes drifted down between us. She closed her eyes in the dim light. I leaned forward. Our lips touched. My ears roared. Passion rushed in a mighty torrent through my veins….