Ralph Bland Approximately 4 000 words
605 Freda Villa
Madison TN 37115
SATELLITE
Through the automatic doors to the parking lot Joe Evans could see the gray steady rain falling on the asphalt and the automobiles with their lights and intermittent wipers and the people wrapped in topcoats and jackets hurrying to get inside and out of the wet and the cold and the wind.
Since it was mid-morning and a Thursday to top it off, hardly any of the pedestrian traffic appeared headed his way toward the Men’s section of the Robbins Department Store. This, it seemed, was a day reserved for bored women with nothing more to do than wander into this mall and buy themselves something new to wear. Unless they absolutely had to, they wouldn’t be getting out in such weather just for some man.
His lunch hour was still more than two hours away, so unless he wanted to be the central figure in the longest day in the history of the world something was going to have to happen to make the minutes tick away more mercifully. Maybe he could go out into the mezzanine and look in a few window fronts- the pet shop, Frederick’s of Hollywood, Champs Sports, the video arcade- but with his luck, a busload of customers would come along and everyone inside it would want a new suit, and the orgiastic commission of his middle-aged life would slip through his fingers forever.
From the distant corner of his brain he became aware of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys singing “California Girls”, Brian wishing aloud through his drug-ravaged libido that all the women in the world could be there in his home state forever, that he wouldn’t have to worry about what was going on all over the rest of the nation ever again, because all he cared about in all the world was right there in front of him and nowhere else.
… That summer was the first one I remembered where there was freedom abounding in each and every day and night. I hadn’t turned sixteen yet, so I couldn’t work and have that activity take up all my time, and I couldn’t drive either, because I couldn’t get a license for a few more months, but I had a lot of friends then, friends who drove cars and were more than happy to come by and pick me up and chauffer me around because I was popular and smart and I knew where the girls were and I had all the good ideas about where to go to have fun. A pack of Winstons between us on the seat, the windows down, and the AM dial on the radio punched back and forth between the two Top Forty stations and we were set. We didn’t need anything else.
Mike Jenkins and Larry Robinson and I took off in Mike’s Fairlane that July Wednesday morning, one of those bright dry orange summer days where the wind rushed in the open windows between each traffic light and you forgot all about air conditioning and you knew between the sun and the wind and your sixteenth birthday on the horizon that the summer would never end and you would never die.
We were headed to a place called Hendersonville, a municipality outside Nashville surrounded by a huge expanse of water called Old Hickory Lake, and we would spend the day cruising the water in Doug Johnson’s daddy’s boat. Doug had gone to school with us from elementary days, but his family had moved away the previous year, and we were all doing our best to maintain our friendship from twenty miles away. We rode up and down the lake in that boat with our bleached hair we’d soon shave off for football practice, driving by private piers and makeshift public beaches, looking at girls tanning in their chairs or on their blankets, studying cleavage and investigating bare skin. One of us would ski while the others observed, and when the skier lost his balance at last and fell, Doug would drive the boat up alongside the fallen one while we all screamed, “Safety Patrol to the rescue!” or something ignorant like that. Then we would jump on the head of the boy in the water from our deck above him and commence to beat the shit out of him in the fun manner that only teenaged boys know and cherish.
We couldn’t get enough of this ritual, but by mid-afternoon we were beginning to bake. We went inside a Zayre’s to buy lotion on the way home, and while we were there we stopped to look at 45 records. There it was, “California Girls” by the Beach Boys. I had to have it, but I had to cough up money for gas for Mike’s car for what we’d used going to Hendersonville, and I didn’t have enough money for both.
There was no one looking, so I stuck the Beach Boys beneath my shirt.
It didn’t really surprise me when I got caught on the way out the door. What surprised me was how the good folks at Zayre’s wouldn’t take any money for the damned 45. They called the cops, and I got to go to Juvenile and wait for my parents to come down and get me, so we could as a unit see a counselor and I could get booked and fingerprinted and shamed and ruined for what I figured would be the rest of my sad wretched life.
All for the sake of Brian Wilson and all those damned California girls I was never going to touch in this lifetime anyway.
… Hats. No one wore hats much anymore. Not unless they were some kind of hot dog Jim Dandy who made it a point to be natty beyond words, or the guy was a queer or something. Most guys were never going to be caught dead in anything more than a ball cap.
He stood looking at the hats with their snappy brims and their colored bands, thinking then of Frank Sinatra, thinking how old Frank was the only one who could ever get away with it completely. And Frank was dead. What did that tell you?
“Midnight at the Oasis” drifted out from somewhere in the foam ceiling, Maria Muldaur- who was surely an old bag by now- shaking her bottom in her tight jeans with her white gardenia in her frizzed coal-black hair. He could see her on the raised stage, he and Robert staring up at her, drunken, drugged, dazed as they were by the heat of the day and the crowd and the lush body that gyrated above them.
“Talent,” Robert said. “This woman has real talent.”
…In the rearview I could see his eyes watching me in the backseat, and I knew that something I said had made him laugh. We were on the road to Panama City. College was over and three of us were going to the beach for a week. To drink. To celebrate. To screw whatever and whichever woman walked across our paths, or at least we hoped so. This was one of those stepping stones we felt required to perform, like if we didn’t pork some chick from Macon our lives wouldn’t be worth writing home about.
I’d been talking a lot the whole trip. We’d been traveling for about five hours now and I still wasn’t on the verge of shutting up. There was something in me that knew the best thing to do this trip, for as long as it lasted, was run my mouth for as long as any of the three of us could stand it. See, there was this girl who was at the bottom of this tirade. Isn’t there always a girl? The girl wasn’t just any girl, though. She was Robert’s girl, not his betrothed or intended or anything like that, but she was Robert’s girl nonetheless. And the night before graduation this girl, this Lisa her name was, had bumped into me at a campus party and before anyone knew it we were bumping a different way back at my apartment. It wasn’t like it was any great shock to either of us. We’d been looking at each other in that way for a long while by then. The surprise was it had taken this long for anything to happen.
But I didn’t want to be known as a buddyfucker. At least not yet. I wanted to end my college career on a friendly note.
…One lone man fingered through the Ralph Lauren sweaters. He held one up to the light as if he wondered if it was thin enough to see through, then laid it back down on the table and walked away. Oh well, Joe thought, at least this will give me something to do for a while. Maybe if I space it out enough I can make folding these sweaters last all the way to lunchtime.
Outside the rain came down heavier. Cardboard wrappers from the Food Court blew past the door in the wet gusts of wind, pressing against the glass like hungry lips before flying away in the storm. It would be hard to cross the lot in such a wind, to get to the car in such a torrent.
… There was wind in his face from the open window on the driver’s side. He sat in the back behind Marsha Davis and watched the breeze play up and down her neck, lift her hair up and let it fall while she held a Salem and watched the road through her dark sunglasses. On the radio Johnny Rivers sang “Mountain of Love,” and Marsha Davis tapped her index finger on the leather steering wheel.
Swimming, he thought. She was driving us somewhere to go swimming. It was Larry and me. We were what? Twelve? Maybe thirteen? No one else had a mother like Larry. He didn’t even notice it. There was no sense in talking to him about it at either. You just couldn’t tell a guy something like that. But nobody else’s mother listened to Top Forty on the radio. Other mothers just told you to turn the music down. And other mothers didn’t look like Larry’s mom. They didn’t wear sunglasses and have full red lips and blonde hair that blew in the wind.
I looked at the back of her neck and watched her fingers keep time on the wheel. My foot tapped along with her in rhythm. We never had too much to say to each other, Marsha Davis and I, but I never got tired of seeing her.
In three years she would be dead, killed in a highway accident our junior years. She was out late. She was alone. The rumors were that she’d been drinking. All the other mothers didn’t talk about it much.
I’m older now than Marsha Davis was on the night she died.
…On cue the Beatles started in on “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Sgt. Pepper’s, was it? Was that right? It wasn’t quite clear in his head. Everything’s on a CD now, or downloaded. Everything’s so small it’s inconsequential. You don’t need two hands to hold it. It’s not going to break if you drop it. So it doesn’t mean as much. When I had LPs it was personal. I knew right where the scratches were. I wiped the vinyl off with a cloth before it went back in its jacket. And I didn’t have to squint to read the album notes. It was like I not only had music but a book too. A record album was something substantial. You held it in your hand and you put it on your turntable and you weren’t alone at home anymore.
…“Don’t you think it would be cute if I could work up something with my class to go along with this song?” She looked out the small window above her sink at the driveway and the neighboring house’s central air unit. “I could have them dancing with each other and wearing little makeshift tuxedos and evening dresses.”
“Sounds like a lot of trouble just for a PTA meeting.”
“It would be. But it would be cute, you have to admit. Of course it might be a waste of time. Hardly anybody ever comes much.”
She was like that a lot, starting conversations and bringing things up and then ending them just like that, like they were never worth talking about in the first place. She stood there looking out her rented window, fingering a bang of her hair. It was hard for me to believe I was lucky enough to be sitting in her kitchen. She was absolutely beautiful at that window, even on a Tuesday afternoon after school, beautiful in a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of jeans she’d had a long time and tennis shoes with paint spots on them. She was out of my league and I knew it. She would ditch me before it was all said and done, but I would stay around until that happened, because it was worth it. I was twenty-three and nobody’s fool. I knew when something special was passing my way.
I met her in a bar on a Saturday night just after Labor Day. She stood looking at the selections on the jukebox, her fingers tracing the words through the glass. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. How could a creature this lovely be standing here alone? And she was alone- I’d made damned sure of that fact for the last few minutes. I was working at a car lot then, and I’d got out of there late waiting for a deal that didn’t happen, so I sat waiting on a burger with my tie still on, looking up at the television at the Atlanta Braves, watching baseball, that is, until I’d spotted her at the Seeburg. Then I wasn’t worried about Phil Neikro anymore.
I’ve been in town a week, she told me, and I didn’t know anywhere else to go. I get lost around here really easy. The town I’m from in Illinois isn’t near this big.
So I made sure I didn’t come on like a redneck sex-fiend, and Karen Abernathy considered me safe enough to become her guide and introduce her to the wonders and sacraments of Dickson, Tennessee. Sometimes, if she got blue enough over her long-lost ex-boyfriend and had a little too much Strawberry Hill to drink, she’d even let me kiss her.
Which was absolutely great and absolutely wonderful. Which was why I knew it was never going to last.
But it lasted longer than I ever thought it would. I saw her all the way from mid-September until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when she left town to drive home to the outskirts of Carbondale to be with her family for the holiday. She didn’t invite me to go with her, though I would have jumped at the chance. I would have abandoned the world of automobile sales in a heartbeat to go with her, but she took off in her blue Fiat without me, and I was left to pine through Turkey Day alone. I told myself she’d be back by Sunday night.
That was almost thirty years ago. I haven’t seen or heard from her since.
After about two weeks of circling by her side of the rented house and seeing only darkness, I got brave and contacted the school where she taught, basically just wanting to know if she was alive or dead or if she’d been swallowed up by the New Madrid Fault on her way back to the Land of Lincoln.
She has resigned her position, was all they would tell me. She will not be back.
I didn’t have to be damned Lt. Columbo to figure out what happened to Karen Abernathy. I could see it in my head like it was a movie or something, could see her sitting at her parents’ table with a turkey steaming on a platter in front of her, Granny and Grandpa and Aunt Nell and Uncle Fred all gathered there together, and then the sound of the telephone in the parlor. There’s Mom shuffling away to answer the ring, the soft conversation, the laugh, the sound of her voice saying, “Karen, it’s for you. It’s Rick.”
Or Bob. Or Dan. Or whoever in the hell the old boyfriend liked to call himself. And she would answer. And the sparks would still be there. And as for the quaint old town of Dickson, that would be it.
I don’t know if Karen ever came back to get her things from her apartment. After a couple of months I gave up driving by the place to see if there was a light on.
… “Uno. dos, tres, quarto,” the ceiling speaker said, and Joe Evans could not help but look up at whatever crazed programmer there was out in the cosmos and smile at the musical choices being delivered unto him this stormy Thursday morning. “Wooly Bully”, he thought. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. You could have never convinced me these guys were going to show up this morning.
…It was the kind of May afternoon that made you restless for the summer that you knew was waiting in the wings. There was warmth from the afternoon sun that refused to set, the sun that sat in the western sky above the hill in front of your house and cast an orange glow on the street and the cars that drove by and the boys and girls from the elementary school pedaling around the block talking about what they were going to do when school was finally out. Sam and his Pharaohs had made it to number one on the charts, and when their song ended I sat beside the transistor radio on my front porch and waited for the commercials to begin and end so I could hear a few more songs in the sunlight before I had to go inside for dinner.
I heard singing outside the bounds of that magic box, so I flicked off the switch to silence the ads. From my seat on the porch I looked up the hill at the place the voice was coming from.
It was Nancy Boston singing. I already knew that. She cooked and washed dishes in her kitchen in the house that was the third on the left, the highest house on the hill, and when her kitchen window was open you could hear Nancy Boston singing her opera songs from almost anywhere in the neighborhood. It was strange and surreal at those moments, hearing that clear true soprano voice drift down from what seemed like the sky and seek us in the neighborhood out with rich pulsing words we didn’t even understand and instill in us images of scenes and people we had no idea existed, this voice that sang to us on these afternoons but never had a word to say when we saw her at the mailbox or backing out of her driveway in her Ford Galaxy or even when we came into her home with her son Mark. We would stand in her foyer, skinny boys in shorts and Keds, looking at the art prints on the wall while Mark ran upstairs to get his glove or his box of baseball cards. Nancy Boston would peer in from her kitchen where the singing came from and see us standing there, but never do I remember her speaking. She would go back to cooking, to cleaning, and to singing her strange melodies when we were at last gone. We were, like everything in the world where we existed, not a part of hers. My mother said it was just the way Nancy Boston was. She was from Nebraska, my mother said. She is a private person.
Perhaps it was that distance, that privacy, which drove Mark to pursue his hobby on those days when his mother was silent or sang those songs he could not understand. Mark would enlist me to go along with him and play “I Spy”, his version of a game where we would creep and sneak and crawl through backyards and hedges to peek through windows or squint through bushes or crane our necks to catch our neighbors watering their lawns, reading magazines, living their lives and performing their daily chores, unaware that curious adolescent eyes were trained upon them and studying their every move.
It was just before Memorial Day, a sunny Saturday that assured you summertime was on the threshold. In the mid-morning Mark and I stalked our latest prey. Four doors down from me lived a seventeen year old cheerleader, who, Mark informed me seriously, liked to spend Saturdays in her backyard listening to the radio and cultivating her tan. She just about gets naked, he told me. I’ve been watching.
He was right. Cynthia Miller wore a skimpy yellow bikini and pulled the straps down to maximize the sun’s rays. From my spot in the bushes I felt pangs I believed would soon be the cause of my death, and when I wasn’t watching Cynthia I glanced at Mark. When our eyes met we’d grin. This was one great secret, one great game.
On Memorial Day school was out. In hopes that we might engage in further study of Cynthia Miller I climbed the hill to Mark’s house. I didn’t think of calling him on the phone, for I wanted to get Mark and travel immediately to our spying point. So consumed was I with my new passion that I felt like getting in a little practice before the actual fact, so I crept around the side of Mark’s house and made my way toward the patio off the downstairs den. I was going to look in the window and maybe catch Mark doing something stupid I could tease him about forever. I would make him a victim of his own game.
I heard voices from the den. I didn’t have to put my ear to the window to know it was Mark’s father yelling. He was home from work because of the holiday, but he wasn’t making this day a holiday for his wife. Before I could turn around and go back the way I’d come I saw Mr. Boston’s hand rise and slap Nancy Boston across the face. At age fourteen I had never seen a man hit a woman before, and I couldn’t make myself unfreeze from my position and retreat back down the hill where I would be safe, safe from such things as abusive fathers and crying mothers, but even as I stepped away at last I knew I didn’t want to spy on anyone ever again. I wanted to make a lot of noise from now on, beat the bushes and crumple the underbrush, just so life could hear me coming. But I also knew there wasn’t enough noise I could make that would ever drown out Nancy Boston’s soprano voice with the foreign words and the mysterious places it invoked. I could turn on “Wooly Bully” as loud as the radio would go, and I would still hear that voice up there on the hill.
…In a few minutes he could go to lunch. Joe Evans looked out the door, mentally willing the rain to stop. He wanted to leave this mall, to go out for lunch. He wanted to get something to go and eat inside his car. He wanted to sit by himself in silence. He didn’t want to listen to the radio or hear any more music for a while.
