In God We Trust (8 page)

I had spent fully two hours carefully arranging and rearranging my great mop of wavy hair, into which I had rubbed fully a pound and a half of Greasy Kid Stuff.

Helen and Schwartz waited on the corner under the streetlight at the streetcar stop near Junie Jo’s home. Her name was Junie Jo Prewitt. I won’t forget it quickly, although she has, no doubt, forgotten mine. I walked down the dark street alone, past houses set back off the street, through the darkness, past privet hedges, under elm trees, through air rich and ripe with
promise. Her house stood back from the street even farther than the others. It sort of crouched in the darkness, looking out at me, kneeling. Pregnant with Girldom. A real Girlfriend house.

The first faint touch of nervousness filtered through the marrow of my skullbone as I knocked on the door of the screen-enclosed porch. No answer. I knocked again, louder. Through the murky screens I could see faint lights in the house itself. Still no answer. Then I found a small doorbell button buried in the sash. I pressed. From far off in the bowels of the house I heard two chimes “Bong” politely. It sure didn’t sound like our doorbell. We had a real ripper that went off like a broken buzz saw, more of a
BRRRAAAAKKK
than a muffled Bong. This was a rich people’s doorbell.

The door opened and there stood a real, genuine, gold-plated Father: potbelly, underwear shirt, suspenders, and all.

“Well?” he asked.

For one blinding moment of embarrassment I couldn’t remember her name. After all, she was a blind date. I couldn’t just say:

“I’m here to pick up some girl.”

He turned back into the house and hollered:

“JUNIE JO
!
SOME KID’S HERE
!”

“Heh, heh. …” I countered.

He led me into the living room. It was an itchy house, sticky stucco walls of a dull orange color, and all over the floor this Oriental rug with the design crawling around, making loops and sworls. I sat on an overstuffed chair covered in stiff green mohair that scratched even through my slacks. Little twisty bridge lamps stood everywhere. I instantly began to sweat down the back of my clean white shirt. Like I said, it was a very itchy house. It had little lamps sticking out of the walls that looked like phony candles, with phony glass orange flames. The rug started moaning to itself.

I sat on the edge of the chair and tried to talk to this Father. He was a Cub fan. We struggled under water for what seemed like an hour and a half, when suddenly I heard someone coming
down the stairs. First the feet; then those legs, and there she was. She was magnificent! The greatest-looking girl I ever saw in my life! I have hit the double jackpot! And on a blind date! Great Scot!

My senses actually reeled as I clutched the arm of that bilge-green chair for support Junie Jo Prewitt made Cleopatra look like a Girl Scout!

Five minutes later we are sitting in the streetcar, heading toward the bowling alley. I am sitting next to the most fantastic creation in the Feminine department known to Western man. There are the four of us in that long, yellow-lit streetcar. No one else was aboard; just us four. I, naturally, being a trained gentleman, sat on the aisle to protect her from candy wrappers and cigar butts and such. Directly ahead of me, also on the aisle, sat Schwartz, his arm already flung affectionately in a death grip around Helen’s neck as we boomed and rattled through the night.

I casually flung my right foot up onto my left knee so that she could see my crepe-soled, perforated, wing-toed, Scotch bluchers with the two-toned laces. I started to work my famous charm on her. Casually, with my practiced offhand, cynical, cutting, sardonic humor I told her about how my Old Man had cracked the block in the Oldsmobile, how the White Sox were going to have a good year this year, how my kid brother wet his pants when he saw a snake, how I figured it was going to rain, what a great guy Schwartz was, what a good second baseman I was, how I figured I might go out for football. On and on I rolled, like Old Man River, pausing significantly for her to pick up the conversation. Nothing.

Ahead of us Schwartz and Helen were almost indistinguishable one from the other. They giggled, bit each other’s ears, whispered, clasped hands, and in general made me itch even more.

From time to time Junie Jo would bend forward stiffly from the waist and say something I could never quite catch into Helen’s right ear.

I told her my great story of the time that Uncle Carl lost his
false teeth down the airshaft. Still nothing. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that she had her coat collar turned up, hiding most of her face as she sat silently, looking forward past Helen Weathers into nothingness.

I told her about this old lady on my paper route who chews tobacco, and roller skates in the backyard every morning. I still couldn’t get through to her. Casually I inched my right arm up over the back of the seat behind her shoulders. The acid test She leaned forward, avoiding my arm, and stayed that way.

“Heh, heh, heh.…”

As nonchalantly as I could, I retrieved it, battling a giant cramp in my right shoulder blade. I sat in silence for a few seconds, sweating heavily as ahead Schwartz and Helen are going at it hot and heavy.

It was then that I became aware of someone saying something to me. It was an empty car. There was no one else but us. I glanced around, and there it was. Above us a line of car cards looked down on the empty streetcar. One was speaking directly to me, to me alone.

DO YOU OFFEND?

Do I
offend?!

With no warning, from up near the front of the car where the motorman is steering I see this thing coming down the aisle directly toward me. It’s coming closer and closer. I can’t escape it. It’s this blinding, fantastic, brilliant, screaming blue light. I am spread-eagled in it. There’s a pin sticking through my thorax. I see it all now.

I AM THE BLIND DATE!

ME!!

I’M the one they’re being nice to!

I’m suddenly getting fatter, more itchy. My new shoes are like bowling balls with laces; thick, rubber-crepe bowling balls. My great tie that Aunt Glenn gave me is two feet wide, hanging down to the floor like some crinkly tinfoil noose. My beautiful hand-painted snail is seven feet high, sitting up on my shoulder, burping. Great Scot! It is all clear to me in the searing white
light of Truth. My friend Schwartz, I can see him saying to Junie Jo:

“I got this crummy fat friend who never has a date. Let’s give him a break and.…”

I
AM THE BLIND DATE
!

They are being nice to
me!
She is the one who is out on a Blind Date. A Blind Date that didn’t make it.

In the seat ahead, the merriment rose to a crescendo. Helen tittered; Schwartz cackled. The marble statue next to me stared gloomily out into the darkness as our streetcar rattled on. The ride went on and on.

I AM THE
BLIND
DATE!

I didn’t say much the rest of the night There wasn’t much to be said.

VII
FLICK OFFERS ME HARD LIQUOR

“You sure you don’t want a shot? A little bourbon maybe?” Flick asked, oozing sympathy. He went on:

“Do you remember the time Jane Hutchinson left me standing in a snowdrift for four hours? While she had a date with Claude Eaton!”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“I hear she moved out somewhere near Cedar Lake.” Flick mopped the bar pensively.

“Cedar Lake! I haven’t heard of Cedar Lake for years! The Dance Hall! The Roller Rink! The Smell! Is it still out there, Flick? How
is
Cedar Lake?”

Flick paused meaningfully in his swabbing, savoring to the full his next statement.

“Cedar Lake. It’s the first time I ever heard of ’em doing it to a lake. It’s Condemned.”

VIII
HAIRY GERTZ AND THE FORTY-SEVEN CRAPPIES

Life, when you’re a Male kid, is what the Grownups are doing. The Adult world seems to be some kind of secret society that has its own passwords, handclasps, and countersigns. The thing is to get In. But there’s this invisible, impenetrable wall between you and all the great, unimaginably swinging things that they seem to be involved in. Occasionally mutterings of exotic secrets and incredible pleasures filter through. And so you bang against it, throw rocks at it, try to climb over it, burrow under it; but there it is. Impenetrable. Enigmatic.

Girls somehow seem to be already involved, as though from birth they’ve got the Word. Lolita has no Male counterpart.
It
does no good to protest and pretend otherwise. The fact is inescapable. A male kid is really a
kid
. A female kid is a
girl
. Some guys give up early in life, surrender completely before the impassable transparent wall, and remain little kids forever. They are called “Fags,” or “Homosexuals,” if you are in polite society.

The rest of us have to claw our way into Life as best we can, never knowing when we’ll be Admitted. It happens to each of us in different ways—and once it does, there’s no turning back.

It happened to me at the age of twelve in Northern Indiana—a remarkably barren terrain resembling in some ways the surface
of the moon, encrusted with steel mills, oil refineries, and honky-tonk bars. There was plenty of natural motivation for Total Escape. Some kids got hung up on kite flying, others on pool playing.
I
became the greatest vicarious angler in the history of the Western world.

I say vicarious because there just wasn’t any actual fishing to be done around where I lived. So I would stand for hours in front of the goldfish tank at Woolworth’s, landing fantails in my mind, after incredible struggles. I read
Field & Stream, Outdoor Life
, and
Sports Afield
the way other kids read G-8
And His Battle Aces
. I would break out in a cold sweat reading about these guys portaging to Alaska and landing rare salmon; and about guys climbing the High Sierras to do battle with the wily golden trout; and mortal combat with the steelheads. I’d read about craggy, sinewy sportsmen who discover untouched bass lakes where they have to beat off the pickerel with an oar, and the saber-toothed, raging smallmouths chase them ashore and right up into the woods.

After reading one of these fantasies I would walk around in a daze for hours, feeling the cork pistol grip of my imaginary trusty six-foot, split-bamboo bait-casting rod in my right hand and hearing the high-pitched scream of my Pflueger Supreme reel straining to hold a seventeen-pound Great Northern in check.

    I became known around town as “the-kid-who-is-the-nut-on-fishing,” even went to the extent of learning how to tie flies, although I’d never been fly casting in my life. I read books on the subject. And in my bedroom, while the other kids are making balsa models of Curtiss Robins, I am busy tying Silver Doctors, Royal Coachmen, and Black Gnats. They were terrible. I would try out one in the bathtub to see whether it made a ripple that might frighten off the wily rainbow.

“Glonk!”

Down to the bottom like a rock, my floating dry fly would go. Fishing was part of the mysterious and unattainable Adult world. I wanted In.

My Old Man was In, though he was what you might call a once-in-a-while-fisherman-and-beer-party-goer; they are the same thing in the shadow of the blast furnaces. (I knew even then that there are people who Fish and there are people who Go Fishing; they’re two entirely different creatures.) My Old Man did not drive 1500 miles to the Atlantic shore with 3000 pounds of Abercrombie & Fitch fishing tackle to angle for stripers. He was the kind who would Go Fishing maybe once a month during the summer when it was too hot to Go Bowling and all of the guys down at the office would get The Itch. To them, fishing was a way of drinking a lot of beer and yelling. And getting away from the women. To me, it was a sacred thing. To f
ish
.

He and these guys from the office would get together and go down to one of the lakes a few miles from where we lived—but never to Lake Michigan, which wasn’t far away. I don’t know why; I guess it was too big and awesome. In any case, nobody ever really thought of fishing in it. At least nobody in my father’s mob. They went mostly to a mudhole known as Cedar Lake.