The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato (15 page)

“Nothing nice about it,” Stinky said, turning to look at me. “Take my word for it—it's a pretty near certitude that, statistically speaking, Charlie Blue will just end up another failure. Uneducated punk kid like that? He'll never amount to anything, future-wise. Tom's just setting him up for a fall. Nothing nice about it.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“Seen it too many times, little lady,” he said. “He'll end up just another loser sitting in a bar.”

Stinky got up and paid his tab and left a nickel for a tip.

“You come back soon, now,” Rafi said as the door closed behind Stinky.

A couple of months later, I ran into Orla for the first time since I had moved. We were both buying cardboard-tasting winter tomatoes in the produce section of the big supermarket. She was happy to see me, especially in such a compromising position. I was like a Baptist preacher being caught with two hookers and a basketful of porn.

“I didn't see your wedding announcement in the paper,” she said. “I looked and looked. Didn't you put one in?”

“We're not married yet,” I said.

“Hmm,” Orla said.

“We're going to get married, but we just haven't yet,” I said.

“Hmm,” Orla said again.

“There are so many details to take care of,” I said, and laughed uneasily, feeling unaccountably panicky, like when you're driving down the road, minding your own business, and you suddenly notice the car behind you is a cop. Even though you're not doing anything wrong, you start to worry.

“We're thinking of June!” I semi-shrieked.

Orla leaned forward and gently patted my oddly sweaty hand. She looked deep into my eyes with a small, sad smile. “I'll pray for you,” she said. Then she patted my hand again and walked off toward the snack aisle.

It is one of the ironies of Christianity that Saturday night turns so seamlessly into Sunday morning. Danny was face down on the pillow with his arm flung out across my belly. I could feel the warmth of him and hear the quiet sound of his breathing. He was awake.

“We've got to get up now,” he said. “I promised my folks that we'd come by after church and eat lunch with them.”

“You what?”

“It was either that or have them here.”

“Lord, anything but that.”

“Do we have an iron?” he asked, sitting up.

“Like for clothes?”

“There has been some discussion of wrinkled shirts from my mother, and I thought it might be best to head that off at the pass.”

We had no iron, but he found a sweater with only one smallish hole and a pair of pants that had been worn only once since they were last washed. I put on the dress Uncle Joe had bought me for my high-school graduation.

“I'll hit you if you laugh,” I said to Danny.

He didn't laugh.

“It's just that they have these ideas,” he said. “They have these ways that they believe things should be.”

“What do they believe?” I asked.

“Well, for one thing, they believe that hell is real, and they believe that I might be going there.”

“Nice parents,” I said.

“It's just that they love me,” he said. “They want so much for me. Better than they had it.”

So we drove out on the old blacktop highway, not saying much—just watching the empty winter fields roll past. We arrived at their house and pulled up to the driveway at the same time as Danny's parents.

“Oh, Daniel, there you are,” his mom said, getting out of their car under the roof of the carport. “I thought you might join us in church this morning.”

“No,” Danny said, looking vague. “No, we were in town.”

“Must be a mighty good preacher there to hold a candle to Reverend Tucker.”

“How's Charlotte?” his dad asked me as we went into the kitchen.

“Charlotte who?” I said.

“I knew a girl named Charlotte once,” he said. Then he paused and smiled. “Now she most definitely was not a nun!”

“Hush, Daddy!” Danny's mom said reprovingly. “There's no call for that kind of conversation.”

Danny's dad hushed, but I noticed that the smile lingered on his face for some time.

“Daniel.” She turned to him. “There was a sale on out at the JCPenney and I bought you two new pairs of nice everyday slacks.” She was beadily eyeing the pants we had been so happy to find that morning. “They're in your room, and you can try them on now.”

“Mama,” Danny began, but she cut him off with a sharp bark—“Daniel!”—and he got wearily to his feet.

“Charlotte used to wear pants sometimes,” Danny's father broke in. “Young ladies didn't wear pants too often in those days, of course. I remember a certain white pair she had . . . .”

“No nonsense, now,” Danny's mother said severely, possibly to both Danny and his dad, and then turned to me, smiling with obvious effort. “Boys will be such boys!” she said. “No matter how old they get, they always need a firm hand.”

“Firm!” his dad said, smiling into space.

“You seem like the sort of . . . ,” she paused, “young lady who knows how to . . . ,” another pause, “handle menfolk.”

“Well . . . ,” I started, thinking that both yes and no were bad answers to this question.

But Danny's mother carried on. “Why, they're just like children, all of them! They don't know what's good for themselves, no matter how many times you tell them!”

“Be sure to tell her I said hello,” Danny's dad said. He reached
out and patted my hand.

“Take Daniel,” Danny's mother continued.

“No, I wouldn't take Daniel along, if I were you.” Danny's father shook his head and then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Charlotte's an awful pretty girl—you should see her in pants!” He winked.

“He has so much potential!” Danny's mother said. “That's what I always tell him. He could do things with himself, if he just showed a little gumption! Or if the right woman would settle him down. Like his cousin Bob Henry—he's just almost exactly Daniel's age, and he already runs four fried-fish sandwich franchises between here and Tennessee. Now there's no reason in the world why Daniel couldn't do that just as well. Or even better—half a dozen franchises! Why, when they were boys, Daniel could just run rings around Bob Henry.”

“Is Bob Henry the one all the cats follow around?” his dad asked.

“Now Daddy, you know Bob Henry!” Then, turning to me, “I'm not saying Bob Henry couldn't maybe spend a little longer in the shower some days. It might help with his acne some, too. But that's beside the point. The point is that he's made something out of himself. You can't say running four fried-fish sandwich franchises isn't making something of yourself!”

“And cats sure do seem to like him,” Danny's dad said, nodding vigorously.

“If he would use lye soap . . . ,” Danny's mother began, but just then Danny appeared, looking resigned in a pair of khaki pants with pleats in the front. They seemed to come up especially high on his waist.

“Now don't you look nice!” Danny's mother said. “So much better than those ratty things you had on.”

“Thank you, Mama,” Danny said morosely.

“Kiss your mama who takes such good care of you,” she said, and he trudged over and kissed her cheek.

“Now let's have lunch,” she said. “You look like you could use a good home-cooked meal for a change.”

We ate baked ham with macaroni salad, potato salad, coleslaw, and three-bean salad. Danny didn't say too much, and we left as soon as we could after lunch.

On the way out, his dad leaned in close to me in the carport. “Don't forget to tell Charlotte I said hello,” he whispered, and winked again.

Later that day, I asked Danny, “What was your mother like when you were little?”

He thought for a minute.

“Disappointed,” he said.

“I know the feeling. I think my mama would have liked me better if only I would have been all done up in a frilly pink dress all the time. But I don't remember her ever buying me anything like that—or ribbons or shiny shoes. Those sorts of things were never for me.”

“Be glad. At least you weren't paraded around in front of everyone dressed up like a prizewinning goose at Easter.”

“No,” I said. “I was never paraded around.”

Autumn wore on and slowly turned into winter—the Southern winter that is really just a long extension of fall, gray and sad and defeated and endless. Danny and I got used to living together and gradually didn't go as much into town on cold nights to keep each other company at work. I worked mostly afternoons and then went home and watched the war on TV. Jake stopped by every now and then and drank beer and watched with me.
Sometimes Danny came home early, and we watched the war together until the TV station went off the air. Summertime seemed longer ago than it really was.

In the mornings, I would wake up and find Danny asleep close to me, one arm flung over his head, his fingers gently curved as if he were cradling a handful of air. I wouldn't touch his hand for fear of waking him, but I would very carefully lay my own hand next to his on the sheets and try to feel the warmth of his body heat.

How well I know this hand,
I would tell myself, marveling at the construction of it—the way the bones and muscles fit together, the way the skin was molded so perfectly against them, the way my own hand could have been cupped so effortlessly into his palm.

My hand belongs in your hand,
I would think, looking at them next to each other.
Your hand belongs with mine and we belong together and you belong to me.

When I got out of bed to go make coffee and start my day, I was very quiet, so as not to disturb him, and sometimes he was still asleep when I left to go to work, his hand still curled into the empty air.

There weren't people down at the pond very often, now that the weather had turned. The water was too cold at night and too forlorn looking in the daytime. I went down and sat on the dock sometimes by myself when Danny wasn't around.