White People (16 page)

Next, a fifty-nine Dodge, black, mint condition, tries to parallel park in the Mercedes’ spot (I’m not getting too much paperwork done today). The driver is one of the worst drivers I’ve ever seen under the age of eighty. Three pedestrians take turns waving him in, guiding him back out. I step to my window and hear one person yell, “No, left, sharp
left
. Clown.” Disgusted, a last helper leaves.

When the driver stands and stretches, he hasn’t really parked his car, just stopped it. I’ve noticed him around town. About twenty-five, he’s handsome, but in the most awkward possible way. His clothes match the old Dodge. His belt’s pulled up too high. White socks are a mistake. I watch him comb his hair, getting presentable for downtown. He whips out a handkerchief and stoops to buff his shoes. Many coins and pens spill from a shirt pocket.

While he gathers these, a second boy (maybe a brother of the Mercedes thief?) rushes to the Dodge’s front, starts gouging something serious across its hood. I knock on my second-story window—nobody hears. The owner rises from shoe-polishing, sees what’s happening, shouts. The vandal bolts. But instead of chasing him, the driver touches bad scratches, he stands—patting them. I notice that the guy is talking to himself. He wets one index fingertip, tries rubbing away scrawled letters. Sunlight catches spit. From my second-floor view, I can read the word. It’s an obscenity.

I turn away, lean back against a half-hot radiator. I admire the portrait of my wife, my twin sons in Little League uniforms. On a far wall, the art reproductions I change every month or so. (I was an art history major, believe it or not). I want to rush downstairs, comfort the owner of the car, say, maybe, “Darn kids, nowadays.” I don’t dare.

They could arrest me for everything I like about myself.

At five sharp, gathering up valise and papers, I look like a regular citizen. Time to leave the office. Who should pass? The owner of the hurt Dodge. His being in the Municipal Building shocked me, as if I’d watched him on TV earlier. In my doorway, I hesitated. He didn’t notice me. He tripped over a new two-inch ledge in the middle of the hall. Recovering, he looked around, hoping nobody had seen. Then, content he was alone, clutching a loaded shirt pocket, the guy bent, touched the spot where the ledge had been. There was no ledge. Under long fingers, just smoothness, linoleum. He rose. I stood close enough to see, in his pocket, a plastic caddy you keep pens in. It was white, a gift from
WOOTEN’S SMALL ENGINES, NEW AND LIKE-NEW
. Four old fountain pens were lined there, name-brand articles. Puzzled at why he’d stumbled, the boy now scratched the back of his head, made a face. “Gee,
that’s
funny!” An antiquated cartoon drawing would have shown a decent cheerful hick doing and saying exactly that. I was charmed.

I
’VE GOT
this added tenderness. I never talk about it. It only sneaks up on me every two or three years. It sounds strange but feels so
natural. I know it’ll get me into big trouble. I feel it for a certain kind of other man, see. For any guy who’s even clumsier than me, than “I.”

You have a different kind of tenderness for everybody you know. There’s one sort for grandparents, say. But if you waltz into a singles’ bar and use that type of affection, you’ll be considered pretty strange. When my sons hit pop flies, I get a strong wash of feeling—and yet, if I turned the same sweetness on my Board of Education, I’d soon find myself both fired and committed.

T
HEN HE SAW ME
.

He smiled in a shy cramped way. Caught, he pointed to the spot that’d given him recent trouble, he said of himself, “Tripped.” You know what I said? When I noticed—right then, this late—how kind-looking he was, I said, “Happens all the time. Me too.” I pointed to my chest, another dated funnypaper gesture. “No reason.” I shrugged. “You just
do
, you know. Most people, I guess.”

Well, he liked that. He smiled. It gave me time to check out his starched shirt (white, buttoned to the collar, no tie). I studied his old-timey overly wide belt, its thunderbird-design brass buckle. He wore black pants, plain as a waiter’s, brown wingtips with a serious shine. He took in my business suit, my early signs of graying temples. Then he decided, guileless, that he needed some quick maintenance. As I watched, he flashed out a green comb and restyled his hair, three backward swipes, one per side, one on top. Done. The dark waves seemed either damp or oiled, suspended from a part that looked incredibly white, as if my secretary had just painted it there with her typing correction fluid.

This boy had shipshape features—a Navy recruiting poster, forty years past due. Some grandmother’s favorite. Comb replaced, grinning, he lingered, pleased I’d acted nice about his ungainly little hop. “What say to a drink?” I asked. He smiled, nodded, followed me out.—How simple, at times, life can be.

I
’M REMEMBERING
: During football practice in junior high gym-class, I heard a kid’s arm break. He was this big blond guy, nice but out of it. He whimpered toward the bleachers and perched there, grinning, sweating. Our coach, twenty-one years old, heard the fracture too. He looked around: somebody should walk the hurt boy to our principal’s office. Coach spied me, frowning, concerned. Coach decided that the game could do without me. I’d treat Angier right. (Angier was the kid—holding his arm, shivering.)

“Help him.” Coach touched my shoulder. “Let him lean against you.”

Angier nearly fainted halfway back to school. “Whoo …”He had to slump down onto someone’s lawn, still grinning apologies. “It’s okay,” I said. “Take your time.” I finally got him there. The principal’s secretary complained—Coach should’ve brought Angier in himself. “These
young
teachers.” She shook her head, phoning the rescue squad. It all seemed routine for her. I led Angier to a dark waiting room stacked with textbooks and charts about the human body. He sat. I stood before him holding his good hand. “You’ll be fine. You’ll see.” His hair was slicked back, as after a swim. He was always slow in class—his father sold fancy blenders in supermarkets. Angier dressed neatly. Today he looked so white his every eyelash stood out separate. We could hear the siren. Glad, he squeezed my hand. Then Angier swooned back against the bench, panting, he said something hoarse. “What?” I leaned closer. “Thank you,” he grinned, moaning. Next he craned up, kissed me square, wet, on the mouth. Then Angier fainted, fell sideways.

Five days later, he was back at school sporting a cast that everybody popular got to sign. He nodded my way. He never asked me to scribble my name on his plaster. He seemed to have forgotten what happened. I remember.

A
S WE LEFT
the office building, the Dodge owner explained he’d been delivering insurance papers that needed signing—flood coverage
on his mother’s country property. “You can never be too safe. That’s Mother’s motto.” I asked if they lived in town; I was only trying to get him talking, relaxed. If I knew his family, I might have to change my plans.

“Mom died,” he said, looking down. “A year come March. She left me everything. Sure burned my sisters up, I can tell you. But they’re both in Florida. Where were
they
when she was so sick? She appreciated it. She said she’d remember me. And Mom did, too.” Then he got quiet, maybe regretting how much he’d told.

We walked two blocks. Some people spoke to me, they gave my companion a mild look as if thinking, What does Dave want with
him?

H
E CHOSE
the bar. It was called The Arms, but whatever word had been arched between the “The” and the “Arms”—six Old English golden letters—had been stolen; you could see where glue had held them to the bricks. He introduced himself by his first name: Barker. Palms flat on the bar, he ordered beers without asking. Then he turned to me, embarrassed. “Mind reader,” I assured him, smiling and—for a second—cupped my hand over the bristled back of his, but quick. He didn’t seem to notice or much mind.

My chair faced the street. His aimed my way, toward the bar’s murky back. Bathrooms were marked
KINGS
and
QUEENS
. Some boy played a noisy video game that sounded like a jungle bird in electronic trouble.

Barker’s head and shoulders were framed by a window. June baked each surface on the main street. Everything out there (passersby included) looked planned, shiny and kind of ceramic. I couldn’t see Barker’s face that clearly. Sun turned his ears a healthy wax red. Sun enjoyed his cheekbones, found highlights waiting in the wavy old-fashioned hair I decided he must oil. Barker himself wasn’t so beautiful—a knotty wiry kid—only his pale face was. It seemed an inheritance he hadn’t noticed yet.

Barker sitting still was a Barker almost suave. He wasn’t spilling anything (our beer hadn’t been brought yet). The kid’s face looked,
back-lit, negotiable as gems. Everything he said to me was heartfelt. Talking about his mom put him in a memory-lane kind of mood. “Yeah,” he said. “When I was a kid …” and he told me about a ditch that he and his sisters would wade in, building dams and making camps. Playing doctor. Then the city landfill chose the site. No more ditch. Watching it bulldozed, the kids had cried, holding onto one another.

Our barman brought us a huge pitcher. I just sipped; Barker knocked four mugs back fast. Foam made half a white mustache over his sweet slack mouth; I didn’t mention it. He said he was twenty-nine but still felt about twelve, except for winters. He said after his mother’s death, he’d joined the Air Force but got booted out.

“What for?”

“Lack of dignity.” He downed a fifth mug.

“You mean … ‘lack of discipline’?”

He nodded. “What’d I say?”—I told him.

“‘Dignity,’ ‘discipline,’” he shrugged to show they meant the same thing. The sadder he seemed the better I liked it, the nicer Barker looked.

Women passing on the street (he couldn’t see them) wore sundresses. How pretty their pastel straps, the freckled shoulders; some walked beside their teenaged sons; they looked good too. I saw folks I knew. Nobody’d think to check for me in here.

Only human, under the table, my knee touched Barker’s, lingered a second, shifted. He didn’t flinch. He hadn’t asked about my job or home life. I got the subject around to things erotic. With a guy as forthright as Barker, you didn’t need posthypnotic suggestion to manage it. He’d told me where he lived. I asked wasn’t that out by Adult Art Film and Book. “You go in there much?”

He gave me a mock-innocent look, touched a fingertip to his sternum, mouthed Who, me? Then he scanned around to make sure nobody’d hear. “I guess it’s me that keeps old Adult Art open. Don’t tell, but I can’t help it, I just love that stuff.—You too?”

I nodded.

“What kind?”

I appeared bashful, one knuckle rerouting sweat beads on my beer mug. “I like all types, I guess. You know, boy/girl, girl/girl, boy/boy, girl/dog, dog/dog.” Barker laughed, shaking his fine head side to side. “Dog/dog,” he repeated. “That’s a good one. Dog/dog!”

He was not the most brilliantly intelligent person I’d ever met. I loved him for it.

W
E WENT
in my car. I didn’t care to chance his driving. Halfway to Adult Art, sirens and red lights swarmed behind my station wagon. This is it, I thought. Then the white Mercedes (already mud-splattered, a fender dented, doing a hundred and ten in a thirty-five zone) screeched past. Both city patrol cars gave chase, having an excellent time.

We parked around behind; there were twelve or fourteen vehicles jammed back of Adult Art’s single dumpster; seven phone-repair trucks had lined up like a fleet. Adult’s front asphalt lot, plainly visible from US 301 Business, provided room for forty cars but sat empty. This is a small town, Falls. Everybody sees everything, almost. So, when you
do
get away with something, you know it; it just means more. Some people will tell you Sin is old hat. Not for me. If, once it starts, it’s not going to be naughty, then it’s not worth wasting a whole afternoon to set up. Sin is bad. Sex is good. Sex is too good not to have a whole lot of bad in it. I say, Let’s keep it a little smutty, you know?

Barker called the clerk by name. Barker charged two films—slightly discounted because they’d been used in the booths—those and about thirty bucks in magazines. No money changed hands; he had an account. The section marked
LITERATURE
milled with phone linemen wearing their elaborate suspension belts. One man, his pelvis ajangle with wrenches and hooks, held up a picture book, called to friends, “Catch
her
, guys. She has got to be your foxiest fox so far.” Under his heavy silver gear, I couldn’t but notice on this hearty husband and father, jammed up against workpants, the same old famous worldwide pet and problem poking.

I
DROVE
B
ARKER
to his place; he invited me in for a viewing. I’d hoped he would. “World premiere,” he smiled, eyes alive as they hadn’t been before. “First show on Lake Drive anyways.”

The neighborhood, like Barker’s looks, had been the rage forty years ago. I figured he must rent rooms in this big mullioned place, but he owned it. The foyer clock showed I might not make it home in time for supper. Lately I’d overused the excuse of working late; even as Superintendent of Schools there’re limits on how much extra time you can devote to your job.

I didn’t want to miff a terrific wife.

I figured I’d have a good hour and a half; a lot can happen in an hour and a half. We were now safe inside a private place.

The house had been furnished expensively but some years back. Mission stuff. The Oriental rugs were coated with dust or fur; thick hair hid half their patterns. By accident, I kicked a chewed rubber mouse. The cat toy jingled under a couch, scaring me.

In Barker’s kitchen, a crockpot bubbled. Juice hissed out under a Pyrex lid that didn’t quite fit. The room smelled of decent beef stew. His counter was layered with fast-food takeout cartons. From among this litter, in a clay pot, one beautiful amaryllis lily—orange, its mouth wider than the throat of a trombone, startled me. It reminded you of something from science fiction, straining like one serious muscle toward daylight.