Blackbird (21 page)

“How did you know?”

“I guess I always sort of knew. I’m gay, too.”

“I always thought … maybe … I was scared.”

“To tell me. I know, baby. I was scared to tell you, too.” I pressed his hand again. “Who was the guy?”

“John. I met him … at the library.” In the music stacks, among the musical-comedy scores – Efrem plays the piano; he loves Rodgers and Hammerstein. Seems Efrem and this guy had been meeting whenever they could catch a moment together, for over a month.

“When we heard the car in the drive, John tried to get away.” The

Johnsons came into Efrem’s bedroom just as John was climbing out the window, his pants barely zipped.

“He called me faggot.” Efrem screwed the heel of his hand into his unswollen eye. “He kept saying it – faggot, goddamned little faggot – while he hit me. It wasn’t the hitting that hurt so much, it was the names.”

There was nothing I could say to console him, nothing I could do to help. I stroked Efrem’s hair and tried to stop crying.

“When are you going home?”

“I don’t know. Maybe never.” He stopped rubbing his eye and looked me in the face. “I’ve got to get out of this town.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

Mrs. Johnson met me just outside the door; she clasped my arm tightly.

“He told you, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“You mustn’t tell anyone, Johnnie Ray. Promise me you won’t tell.”

“I won’t tell anybody, Mrs. Johnson.” I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have to.

When I got home, I could hear Mom and Dad talking in the den over the sound of an
I Love Lucy
rerun. It wouldn’t have taken a psychic to guess what they were talking about, even without hearing the words.

I picked up the phone and dialed Marshall’s number. After thirteen rings, I finally put it down. Then I went to my room and put on Joni.

I was right about one thing. By Monday morning, the whole school knew Efrem Zimbalist Johnson’s father had messed up Efrem’s face over the weekend. No one seemed any too clear as to just why Mr. Johnson might want to beat the shit out of his only son, although the best and most colorful guesses tended to involve sex. (The one most frequently bandied about, naturally, was that Efrem had knocked up some girl.)

As I suspected, word had (at least partially) got out; and with no help whatsoever from me. Around here, if one person knows something at breakfast time, the whole damn town’s heard it by noon. Maybe the version that hits the street is a few generations removed from the truth, but it’s probably not so far away that there isn’t some family resemblance. Knowing this to be the case, I took a big chance (sort of a calculated risk born of desperation) when I told Skipper, and then Cherie, that I’m gay. The chance that neither of them might ever want to see or hear from me again, of course, and the (perhaps more serious) chance that one or both of them might tell the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, or maybe even (horrors!) my parents that Johnnie Ray is as queer as they come.

Not that it would have occurred to me to fear actual bodily harm from the very people who gave me life. On the other hand, neither was I so naïve as to suppose I could simply march up to Mom (standing by the stove stirring the roux gravy and singing “In the Sweet By-and-By” softly to herself) and say, “Excuse me, Mom, but I just wanted you to know I’m a homosexual,” and expect her to say, “That’s fine, baby; dinner, be ready soon.”

After all, I’ve known about me for a long time now. Even before I knew there was a word (several words, in fact) for a boy like me, who finds that his love light shines brightest on other boys, I knew I was different; and I was at least semi-comfortable with that fact by the time I was thirteen or fourteen years old. And with the knowledge that there are indeed others, that in L.A. there are lots and lots of others just waiting to be located, came the desire, indeed the immediate life-goal to escape to (as Joni once called it) the City of the Fallen Angels while my high-school diploma was still hot in my hands – to bid this tight-assed little town ta-ta, returning only for the occasional weekend, lest the parental purse strings be pulled prematurely shut.

Oh, I had every intention of telling the folks the truth about me – in due time. Like in the mid-eighties, following graduation from the university, once I was firmly established in my singing career and quite financially independent, thank you. It’s not as if I considered my parents child-eating ogres or anything. It’s just that Mom and Dad haven’t had nearly the time to adjust to the idea of my being gay that I’ve had. So why push it, you know? And if by some chance they did find out (and, as I say, I always knew there was that chance) – well, I’d just have to cross that bridge when I got to it. I just sort of hoped I wouldn’t get to it.

Now, Efrem’s “accident” made the thought of being found out by the folks infinitely more frightening than it had ever been before. The possibility of a fate similar to Efrem’s befalling yours truly was one ugly possibility, indeed. In terms of muscular strength, my dad makes Efrem’s dad look like a ninety-seven pounder. My face might never be the same. So between my buddy (now my best gay buddy) having had his nose relocated by his own father, and my renewed fear of discovery, the days following the Accident found me in a serious funk. My head was so full of depression that my psychic abilities had regressed to the point where I was no longer getting a statistically significant number of cards right. Crystal assured me it would pass. School seemed endless; I couldn’t concentrate in class, and I couldn’t seem to study worth a damn afterwards, and finals loomed large on the horizon. I was pretty sure I’d get by; but then, just getting by has never been my style.

Not exactly helping through this trying time was the fact that Marshall was gone. I mean real gone. I must have called him thirty-seven times that Saturday after leaving Efrem in the hospital, knowing just hearing his voice would help. No reply. I doubled that number on Sunday, to no avail. Monday looked much the same. Tuesday, I got a recording: the number I had dialed was no longer in service. A lump the size of the library’s world globe grew in my throat and spent the day. Finally, on Wednesday, I got a letter postmarked Prescott, Arizona, written on one sheet of lined paper ripped out of a spiral notebook:

Dear Johnnie Ray:

So sorry for not getting in touch by phone. The past few days have been insane. I left for Arizona Saturday night, and I’ve been working on this film – correction – this movie, ever since. It’s been wild.

It’s been real special, Johnnie Ray. You’re real special. Never forget that. Take care. Have a good summer. Good luck at UCLA, not that you’ll need it.

I know we’ll see each other again.

Love,
Marshall Two-Hawks MacNeill

My first reaction was tears. I needed Marshall Two-Hawks MacNeill, needed him here and needed him now. How dare he not be here? My second reaction was to rip the letter to shreds and toss them into the kitchen garbage pail. My third reaction was to dig the shreds out of the kitchen garbage pail and Scotch-tape them back together, and tuck the reassembled letter into my three-ring binder.

Anyway, one thing and another, I’d had better weeks. And hanging over the proceedings like hail-bearing clouds was the nagging, nearly relentless sense of foreboding, a feeling that something unbearably ugly was due to happen to me soon.

Chapter Nineteen

It happened on a Saturday night, two weeks to the day after the Accident. I’d been out at the J.C.; Skipper had asked me especially to come and see
Hooray for Love
. How could I say no? I suppose (as Mom would say) I just watch too many old movies, but I must admit to feeling a pang or two as I walked down the selfsame hall where I first saw Marshall, walking that bow-legged big-assed walk of his.

The play was everything I’d expected. In fact, parts of it weren’t even as
good
as
Love, American Style
. The Romeo and Juliet scene was a bit painful to watch; Skipper and Kathleen ended up doing it, and they weren’t bad at all. It’s just that I’d have killed to do that scene. Afterward, I went back stage to do the big Congratulations, Dahling number; made a big deal out of shaking hands with Brock, watching him wince at my approach, probably wondering if I planned to uproot one of the seats and bean him with it; declined an invitation to the cast party – I mean, who needs that shit? – and bused it home.

Approaching the house, starting up the driveway, I suddenly got the overpowering urge to turn on my heels and just keep walking all the way to L.A. maybe. This was it, I thought, the moment we’d all been waiting for. I took a deep breath and went in.

My ugliest fears had come true, and were sitting in the living room. Mom sat bolt upright on the sofa, wearing a look of complete and utter disgust; a look just a scream away from infanticide; a look that could turn a seventeen-year-old boy to stone. Dad sat next to her, his face buried in his hands, weeping audibly, his massive shoulders shaking with sobs. I’d never seen my father cry before, not even at his father’s deathbed. The sight of it now was another Muhammad Ali right hand to my stomach.

Across from my parents, literally on the edge of the chair, sat Daniel Levine, youth minister of our church. At the sight of Daniel’s slightly cross-eyed, perpetually five-o’clock-shadowed face, I suddenly remembered something I must have subconsciously forced myself to forget. Something that, upon remembrance, made my heart slam on its brakes and screech to a stop. I remembered that I had not only told Cherie Baker and Skipper Harris that I was homosexual, I had also told Daniel Levine.

It happened several months previous to that black Saturday night. I had just seen
The Exorcist
down at the drive-in with Efrem and a carful of the Drama II gang. Kathleen spent most of the movie with her hands over her eyes; Skipper, who had made off with a six-pack from his house, drank five of the six and ate his share of the large pepperoni pizza we bought at the snack bar and then (concurrently with Linda Blair spewing hot guacamole all over Max von Sydow) opened the car door and barfed his guts out all over the pavement. Efrem loved the movie, start to finish.

Of us all, only I seemed to have been moved to a profound sense of spiritual guilt. The following day, I paid Daniel Levine a visit, and confessed that I thought I might be homosexual, half out of a sudden fear of eternal damnation (or terrestrial demonic possession at the very least), half out of the wild hope that Daniel might assure me that the Lord loved me just as I was.

What Daniel did was wrinkle his one great eyebrow and assure me (clearing his throat every few words) that I was indeed not a homosexual at all, but that Satan had planted this wild notion in my mind to test the steadfastness of my Christian commitment.

“Satan will often suggest (ahem) certain ungodly desires to the minds and hearts of Christian young people,” said Daniel, avoiding my eyes and wiping his palms on the tops of his thighs. “You haven’t (cough, cough) acted on these desires, of course?”

I assured Daniel that I had indeed not yet acted upon these desires, of course (omitting the fact that this was entirely due to lack of good opportunity). Daniel then proceeded to lay hands on me and pray for my speedy deliverance from these unnatural and ungodly desires, instructed me to pray likewise daily, assured me that of course this entire matter was strictly between the two of us, and sent me on my way. It was maybe a day and a half before I was completely over the notion that my gayness was inherently evil or ungodly, and the fact that I’d ever even spoken with Daniel Levine never again entered my mind.

That is, until I suddenly found myself confronted with the unpleasant spectacle of Daniel, obviously having spilled the old beans to Mom and Dad, and looking as holy and righteous at having done so as my parents looked utterly devastated at the news. All three heads turned as I shut the front door behind me.

Dad wept. Mother glowered. Daniel – amazingly – smiled.

“Hello, Johnnie Ray,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

I could scarcely believe this was happening. It was as if the world was coming to an end with both a bang and a whimper. I took a seat across from Mom and Dad. Mom sat ramrod stiff, with a Gale Son-dergaard sort of a sneer on her face; Dad looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week of nights, his eyes bright red from crying.

“You probably know why I’m here, Johnnie Ray,” Daniel said, the picture of calm. He could afford to be calm. He wasn’t watching his life being blown to smithereens like Krakatoa East of Java. “What with what happened to Efrem Zimbalist Johnson, I thought it the better part of valor to check in on you, find out how you were doing vis-à-vis your” – he avoided my eyes – “your sexuality. I informed your mom and dad that you’d come to me with a problem. A problem with unnatural desires.”

“You said it was between us.”

“I know, Johnnie Ray; I know I did. But I just felt that, in light of the … the incident with Efrem, that perhaps parental involvement was in order. I’m sure you understand.”

“I’m sure,” I said with all the sarcasm I could muster.