Drowning of Stephan Jones (10 page)

Carla wanted to talk about something else—about someone she cared about very much and yet was causing her great concern. Particularly when that someone acted with such unreasonable hatred.

Among the many things that Carla admired about Debby
was her ability to dive head-on into heavy waters. But for herself, Carla was more comfortable easing in one teeny-weeny toe at a time. “Notice how upset Andy was when he drove us home from the library last night?”

“You all have a fight?”

“No, but maybe I wouldn’t have felt so mad at myself this morning if we had!”

“You going to tell me what happened?” Debby asked.

“Andy is leading a crusade against a couple of antique dealers in town. They’re the two gay guys I told you about—you know, the ones who were in Harris’s that day.”

“Yeah, but what business is that of Andy’s?”

Carla shrugged. “Beats me. Ever since one of the men was overheard saying something loving it got Andy crazy that two guys are like that. He’s been hassling them or else talking about hassling them. One or the other.”

Debby shook her head decisively. “Andy shouldn’t be doing that.” And just those simple words—“Andy shouldn’t be doing that”—could be ammunition enough, thought Carla, to supply her with the courage to look into his bottomless blue eyes and tell him straight out: “What you’re doing is wrong!”

Carla began to imagine the scene. Maybe she’d take Andy’s hand before leading him to a place where they could truly be alone. To her favorite spot in all of Rachetville, a grassy stretch along the east bank of the Pascaloosa River. This time her mission would be very different, because this time she couldn’t just lazily daydream. With all the conviction she could express, she’d come right out and tell him, “I really, really hate it when you’re hating. I hate it even more when you try to force me into hating, too!”

But when it was Andy’s turn to respond, her clear mental image of the scene began to blur, gradually fading into a fogginess that made Carla’s vision as obscure as a moonless night. Again and again she struggled to conjure up just the right daydream,
the one that had him anguished over the pain that he had caused, so anguished, in fact, that he promised never again to give in to hatred.

But again and again the girl’s repeated attempts at visualizing Andy’s remorse failed. No matter how hard she tried, from whatever angle she looked, she simply could not “see” him feeling even a penny’s worth of pity for someone else’s pain. Especially not for the pain he caused Frank Montgomery and Stephan Jones.

During lunch, the Rachetville High School cafeteria had any number of hubs of activity, each one presided over by one or more high-energy individuals. At one of these hubs, Andy Harris, surrounded by Spider, Ironman, and their girlfriends Lisa and Donna, was reading aloud from a letter written on crinkly blue-gray stationery. It was addressed to Frank Montgomery. At first glance, the juvenile scrawl was a bit surprising, particularly since the writer himself was so exceptionally well coordinated.

Andy frowned gravely as he began to read:

Dear Fruit fly—You and your queer pervert boyfriend are not going to get away with PERVERSION! NO WAY! The Apostle Paul said people who do what you do cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven! Remember that the Apostle Paul did not say MAYBE you couldn’t or PROBABLY you couldn’t! He said you could
not
!!! Period!!! Exclamation Point!!! End of Argument!!! You are going to fry like a french fried potato in the hot, humid, stinking, filthy bowels of hell and I’ll be GLAD!!! This is a warning to stay out of our town and get out of our Christian state of Arkansas FAST!!! Or take the CONSEQUENCES!!

A(venging) H(ero)

Even before Carla reached their special lunch table, she could hear the whoops and hollers of approval from Andy and the gang. “What’s up?” she asked, sliding her lunch tray onto her “reserved” space at the table next to him.

“Oh, wait until you hear the letter he wrote! Dy-na-mite!” chanted Donna, giving each syllable separate but equal emphasis. “Read it again, Andy. Carla has
got
to hear this!”

Carla wondered if Donna began talking that way after she became a cheerleader or did they make her a cheerleader because she just naturally talked that way?

Proudly Andy slipped the letter out of an envelope with a giant A and a giant H on its upper left-hand corner. This time he began reading the letter for her and her alone. She couldn’t help noticing that Donna and Ironman, Spider and Lisa, all had their eyes focused on her.

Was her consistently less than enthusiastic bashing of Frank and Stephan a matter of the group’s concern? she wondered. Before she could be completely accepted in their golden inner circle was it absolutely necessary for her to demonstrate her loyalty to them all by becoming really gung ho, making their enemies
her
enemies?

Andy continued to read with undisguised emotion. “You are not—repeat NOT—going to get away with perversion.”

Who appointed Andy Harris moral judge and jury to the world? She felt her own temperature jump even higher as he emphasized the “Fry like a french fried potato” line. What incredible arrogance! Where did he get the idea that God is as cruel and as sadistic to another fellow human being as he is?

Finally, Andy’s eyes left the page as he delivered the next line straight from memory. “This is a warning to stay out of our town and get out of our Christian state of Arkansas. FAST!!! Or take the consequences!”

“And I signed it at the bottom with a big A and a big H,”
Andy added, “so they’d know it was me—but next to the A I spelled out avenging, and next to the H I spelled out hero. So that way they won’t be able to prove a thing!”

Upon hearing that, Carla thought that beyond arrogance and cruelty, there was also stupidity. Raw and rank STUPIDITY! Hadn’t Andy ever heard of fingerprints and handwriting experts? And the others, what was wrong with them? Just why were they grinning as though they had accidentally discovered the questions to be asked on the history final exam?

“So?” asked Lisa. “Isn’t it something? You think those faggots are going to hang around Parson Springs? I know for a fact that they’re not going to hang around. Faggots aren’t brave people. Ask anyone who knows them—everybody will tell you the same thing, they’re not what anyone would call brave!”

Carla looked up into the faces around her, fearful of becoming like them and at the same time, perhaps, even more fearful that she might not be accepted by them. She felt her entire insides silently screaming out for compassion and understanding for two fellow human beings whose only crime was ... was being different.

“Answer my question already,” demanded Andy. “Do you or don’t you think my letter is awesome?”

Soundlessly she heard herself scream back her response. “Your letter is disgusting! A disgrace! You should all feel dirty and ashamed, but you Andy Harris, are the leader, and you should feel the most shame of all.” That’s exactly what she did say in the deepest, quietest, and most real part of her being.

But the voice of audible, hearable sound—the one she depended upon to communicate her approval or disapproval to a generally disinterested world spoke differently. “Oh, Andy, are you really going to send this? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get in trouble?” Sadly she noted that not a single one of her words carried even a touch of the moral outrage that was now exploding within her.

While Andy seemed pleased that he had so much of her concern, he tossed away the question of fear with a quick but determined toss of his head.

Even so it was clear to Carla that he still needed her to express her admiration of his poison pen.

“Here,” she announced, taking the letter from his hand. “Better let me read it for myself.”

Although the disgust began to well up in her stomach even before her eyes finished scanning the letter, she knew that she couldn’t lose him. After all, what did this really have to do with them? With their love for each other? “Wow! This letter is really something!” she boomed. “It’s, you know, incredible!”

She waited, half expecting to be struck down by God’s own lightning (those special lightning rods he must use for his worst-case hypocrites), or at the very least to be overcome by the hypocrite’s strong sense of self-disgust, but strange to say, that’s not what seemed to be happening. Because for the first time, she could almost feel those unseen barriers (the ones that had, up to now, been separating her from the others) begin to fall away. Funny, it was kind of funny, but now for the very first time, the whole group was truly united, sharing something as strong and as powerful as hate.

Seeing Andy and his friends visibly warming to her, she understood at long last that to get along sometimes you just had to go along. But if that was true, then how come there was a sad and sickening feeling deep in the hollow of her stomach?

Chapter 11

F
RANK SHIFTED THE
Winnebago into reverse and began backing away from the garage. Stephan grumbled, “This is ridiculous! Driving the monster to work when we could just as easily take the bikes or walk. We’ll never find three consecutive parking places, and even if we do we’re practically guaranteed to forget to feed the meters and get tickets.” And to make his point even stronger, Stephan flashed the middle three fingers of his right hand. “
Three
tickets!”

Frank backed the recreational vehicle onto leafy Bennett Street. “Boy, you know something? You’re as cranky this morning as an old virgin!”

“Well, you’d be cranky, too, Frankie, if you had been wakened from a sound sleep by an obscene and threatening phone call!”

“What do you mean
if
?” Frank loudly demanded, swiveling his head a full ninety degrees to stare with mock disbelief at Stephan. “And exactly where do you think I was when that piece of slime phoned? Sailboating off Marblehead harbor? Or maybe snorkeling in the Cayman Islands?”

Stephan’s lower lip pouted out, giving him a cross little-boy look. “Yeah, but you went right back to sleep, and I didn’t!”

Frank shook his head slowly. “Relax, Stevie,” he said soothingly. “We just can’t take the Andy Harrises of this world too seriously. It reminds me of the summer I visited my grandparents on their farm not far from Richmond, Virginia.”

Stephan looked quizzical. “These harassments remind you of your visit to the farm? Pardon me, and not to be nosy, but did I miss something?”

Without paying the slightest attention to his partner’s skepticism Frank explained. “As my grandfather and I tramped across the cow pasture, I found myself skipping to the right,
jumping to the left, or sometimes merely hopping over piles of manure. All the while Poppy never deviated a millimeter from his straight-line destination.

“By the time we reached the barn, I had inches more manure on my shoes than Poppy. And while he appeared cool and composed, I had enough sweat rolling down my face to water the vegetable garden. When I asked why that was so, he said something that I knew I’d always remember.”

“What was that?” asked Stephan, finally engaged.

Frank closed his eyes while rubbing across the deepening lines in his high forehead. “‘Son,’ he told me, ‘it never does much good to go hopping and skipping just to avoid a little cow dung ’cause there’s far too much shit and far too many shitheads in this world for you to avoid them! So my advice to you is to always act like a man and go marching on through.’”

Frank’s laugh was deep and rich and every bit as contagious as a case of childhood measles. So contagious, in fact, that in spite of himself Stephan caught it, too.

Frank expertly maneuvered the oversized vehicle into a vacant space in a downtown alleyway. As the men hiked up the narrow, picturesque business street that wound up the mountain, they passed the Ozark Craft Shop, The Two Dumb Dames Fudge Factory, Beau’s Leatherworks, Country Cuzzin Quilts, and Gazebo Books. As they walked past Josie’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant, they heard someone calling their names.

“Frankie! Stevie! How come you handsome dudes don’t come see Josie no more?” shouted out the well-into-middle-age buxom owner, Josie Fernandez Campbell Wicksham O’Brien. “What’s the matter, don’t you all love me no more?”

As they peered at the woman who leaned languidly against the restaurant’s front door, Frank grinned. “Oh, Josie, heart of my heart, are you kidding me? Stevie and I had burritos at your place Thursday.”

The cafe owner vigorously shook her head, allowing her freedom-loving hair to bounce off in all conceivable directions. “What good does that do me? I don’t want to just
cook
for you. I want to see you, too—sit with you for a spell and tell you about all the many loves of my life. What you think, old women don’t like to look at pretty people? That what you think?”

Stephan smiled a genuine, although ever-so-slightly embarrassed smile, while Frank, with a knowing look in his eye, called back, “Josie honey, you’re going to be many things, but you’re never going to be old, I can promise you that ’cause lady, you’re the real thing—you’ve got that certain ... spark.”

“Spark, is it?” Josie retorted, throwing her hands against her wide waist. “Too bad you fellows weren’t around here thirty-five or forty years ago, back when I was young. You think I couldn’t
spark
your interest? Light your fires? Well, with a
real
woman like me around you all would be lost to each other and as straight as an arrow. I can tell you that.”

With both hands Frank clutched his heart. “Oh, my God,” he yelled, shoving Stephan off the granite sidewalk. “Beat it, boy! Oh, it’s happening to me, Josie. It’s happening to me now.” He dropped to one knee. “Finally, true love has struck. Oh, Josie, oh, Josie, it’s you!”

Josie snapped the yellow dish towel at her waist at a surprised Frank. “Laugh all you want to, but just remember you don’t know what you don’t know if you don’t know it! Now ain’t that so? You just remember to come on back to see me, you heah?”

“Yes ma’am,” Frank called out. Laughing, both men headed smartly up winding corkscrewlike Bennett Street toward their shop.