Drowning of Stephan Jones (7 page)

“You know, some things don’t improve very much in the telling. Roy didn’t even have the guts to tell me face-to-face.”

“All the same you should have told me.”

Judith slowly turned her gaze back to her daughter. “Really?”

“Mom, I knew you never wanted to talk about it. I’ve thought a lot about it, but I guess I figured it all wrong. Knowing that you have such a strong will and guessing that he had one, too—well, I thought that you two had one huge hullabaloo of an argument and neither one would give in and so you and he split.”

“And now that you do know he left us, does it make any difference?” Judith’s eyes examined her daughter’s face for signs of disapproval.

Carla shook her head. “I still don’t get it. If you were so meek and mild when Dad was around, then how could you become so damn fearless after he had gone away? I mean, after all of the responsibility suddenly became only your responsibility?”

Judith’s laugh echoed with sadness, as though the joke was on her. “Please don’t ever call me ‘fearless,’ Carla.”

“I’m trying to give you a compliment.”

Judith’s eyes played momentarily on her daughter before answering. “Not when it feels as though you don’t know me at all.”

“I didn’t exactly mean ‘fearless,’” she said, accepting the correction. “I know you feel fear—I only meant that you don’t let fear stand in your way. You just go charging ahead and do whatever needs doing.”

Judith gave her daughter a that’s-more-like-it nod. “And may I add that that ‘charging ahead’ quality didn’t happen immediately.
It evolved slowly, but I don’t know if it would have ever happened at all if it hadn’t been for you.”

The girl managed to look both delighted and quizzical all at the same time. “Because of me? Are you kidding?”

“I remember it so well. More than fifteen years have passed, but it’s as fresh in my memory as bread hot from the oven. I was sitting in the wicker rocking chair, rocking you off to sleep, and not any differently than I had rocked you to sleep so many countless times before. There was certainly a difference that time; only the difference wasn’t with you; it was with me.

“As you lay sleeping in my arms, I began talking to you, telling you how sorry ... how very sorry I was that I hadn’t provided you with a real, in-residence Daddy, but right there and then I made you this promise: You were going to, at the very least, have a mother. I would see to that. You were going to have a real, live mother, somebody that stood for something. Somebody whom you could look up to and hold on to. From that moment on I was determined to become much more than a smudged Xerox copy of the never-to-return Roy Wayland.”

Chapter 6

W
HEN THE FRONT
doorbell chimed, Judith jumped up from the kitchen table while glancing at her watch. “Good Lord, why does that man do that to me?”

“Early Eddie strikes again,” sang out Carla. She made it her business to go to the front door. She knew that her mother would appreciate a little time to make sure she was looking her best before her afternoon date with Edward Landis Jameson, III.

Carla swung open the door and was totally surprised. It wasn’t the expected Eddie Jameson at all, but a most unexpected Andy Harris, posed nonchalantly on the front porch. “Merry Christmas,” he said, handing her a less-than-professionally wrapped gift the size of a pound box of candy. “Oh, my God!” she said, staring at the box as though it were fixing to explode.

“What’s the matter, don’t you like candy?”

“No, I love candy!” she protested. “I really do! And thank you—it’s so nice of you ... really.”

“Are you on a diet?” he asked suspiciously. “You don’t need to be on a diet—your figure is great.”

The girl took in the compliment without responding. She always found compliments a lot like medicine in capsule form, just too damn difficult to swallow. It wasn’t even that she thought the compliment giver was insincere; no, not insincere, but invariably she thought the person mistaken. If she found compliments difficult to accept and even harder to acknowledge, that certainly wasn’t true of criticism.

But because this was a compliment, she instinctively dropped her gaze. “No, I’m not on a diet—I didn’t mean to act so strange either. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting you. I never dreamed we were going to exchange gifts so I don’t have anything for you. Oh, I wish ... I really wish I had something for
you ...”

“Hey, it’s no big deal, this is only a box of candy,” he said, slipping off his buttery-brown leather jacket before making himself comfortable on the pillow-accentuated sofa. “Besides, seeing you is the best thing that’s happened to me all day.”

Hearing him say that made her realize that she should trust her instincts because when she first swung open her front door she’d thought that Andy looked a little sad. “Don’t tell me that Santa skipped your house?”

“Nah, wait till you see! Dad bought me real professional boxing gear, two sets of gloves, two punching bags. It’s not that I don’t like the stuff either, it’s just that I hate sparring with my dad.”

“How come?” Carla looked as surprised as she sounded. Andy examined her eyes and it wasn’t until he found sufficient understanding there that he felt encouraged enough to continue. “With him, it’s not a game, it’s a life-or-death struggle, know what I mean?”

Suddenly, beneath his right eye she observed a barely noticeable (but still and all, noticeable) puffiness. “Why, that’s ridiculous! He has a huge weight advantage over you!” The girl’s voice spilled over with heartfelt outrage that someone would hurt her Andy. “Not to mention arm reach!”

Because her anger acted like a soothing balm for the injustice done him, he smiled appreciatively. “Boy, I wish you’d tell him that! He knocked the living hell out of me and every time I duck, or take a step backwards, he calls me names.”

Carla frowned. “Calls you names?”

Andy frowned, too. “Yeah, names!”

“The name calling bothers you as much as the pummeling?” she inquired.

“More! ’Cause he calls me ...” Andy shook his head, as though it were too painful to speak those names.

“I’ll never tell anyone,” she offered. “I promise you; it’ll be
our secret.”

“He calls me ‘Miss Andy’ like I’m some fag!” His face had now taken on a warmish-reddish hue. “Well, I’m not, and he better watch out, too, ’cause the next time we box, I’m going to knock his fucking teeth down his fucking throat! Honest I will!”

“Oh, come on,” she said, leaning ever-so-slightly against him. “That’s the last thing, the very last thing that anyone could think about you.”

He grinned shyly while exhaling what seemed to be a really huge surplus of pent-up hostility.

“Here,” she said, presenting the now-opened box of chocolates for his first pick. “Eat something sweet and be reminded that everything in this world isn’t sour.”

“Well, you’re not at all sour, or bitter either, that’s for sure. Uh, there was a card that came with the candy.”

She began searching through the ribbon and wrappings. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see a card.”

“You won’t find it there,” he said shyly, sliding a white card from his shirt pocket. “It’s here, and I wrote it just for you.”

Taking the card from between Andy’s fingers, she began to read aloud:

Not just today but all the years through

My heart will always be close to you.

Love and kisses,

Andy

Leaning forward, she shyly placed a kiss upon his lips. Somewhere between the kissing and the clinging she came to understand that however much she needed him, he needed her more. Quite a bit more!

The door chimed and Andy looked startled, as though his father had tracked him down to challenge him to another till-death-do-us-part boxing match. “It’s just my mother’s friend,”
Carla explained while rising to her feet. “He’s taking us out for a drive—would you like to join us?”

In the next moments a radiant and rested Judith breezed through the living room to greet Eddie Jameson with a hug, made the introductions, and extended to Andy the same invitation that Carla had. Andy smiled with genuine pleasure.

“Uncle Mark, Aunt Caroline, and their three girls are having Christmas dinner with us today at two. If I don’t show up, they’d murder me!”

Judith and Eddie laughed. Judith suggested that nobody’s company was worth getting murdered for, “not even Carla’s.”

As Andy slid his arms into his jacket, he looked at Carla with an expression that she read as regret, regret that he couldn’t spend more time with her. Carla felt that their relationship had already deepened and she was certain that Andy felt the same way that she did. “Walk me to my car?”

Outside the sun was brightly shining and the temperature hovered around the freezing mark, which is about as cold as it usually got in Rachetville.

“Oh, by the way,” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “I saw you and your mother at my church today.”

“Oh, yes,” Carla responded while making a mental note to pray tonight for forgiveness for the lie that would now be leaving her lips. “Mom and I really liked it there, too. And your preacher is exactly like you said he’d be, dynamic. Really dynamic.”

“Boy, you won’t believe how right he is, too. Remember what his sermon was about today? Remember how he showed us example after example of what’s happening today in the real world and how Satan goes on getting bolder and bolder? Well, you won’t believe—you’ll never believe just how right that was!”

“Tell me, Andy, what happened?”

“Those queers—one’s name is Frank Montgomery and the
other is Stephan Jones, the same ones that were prancing around our store until my dad and Claude Hudgins’s wife told them where to get off—well, you’ll never guess where they went today!”

The girl shook her head as though she didn’t have a clue when, in fact, she had not only spotted the two men leaving church, but she had also done something she didn’t have the courage to admit: She had smiled when she caught their eye. Even so, she continued to shake her head, because she knew that Andy wouldn’t want to hear anything about that.

His face flushed as he shook his fist. “Those filthy fags with their stupid faces sticking out had the nerve to march right into
our
church!” His lips, his lovable lips in front of her very eyes became ugly and sneering. “Why, you’d think they owned the joint!”

Carla felt as though the right side of her body was ripping itself away from the left and soon there would be two separate but equal halves. One of those halves wanted to defend the men because she really liked them. She just felt they were nice, gentle people who wouldn’t hurt others. In her heart, she knew that it was the right thing to do. But the other part of her wanted to stand by her man no matter what damn fool thing he said or did. After all, suddenly she felt she belonged—she knew she was Andy’s girlfriend. Right or wrong, it was the womanly and loving thing to do since Andy would expect that behavior. Wouldn’t that draw Andy and her that much closer together? Didn’t she want to be a couple more than anything else?

“What we have to always remember,” he sermonized, allowing his voice to rise half-again higher than ordinary conversational level, “is that these are no small sins like stealing apples and telling white lies. This is the vilest sin that a person can commit. Period! Exclamation point! Leviticus twenty-thirteen says it and so does Romans one, twenty to thirty-two.”

He paused long enough to give Carla time to throw sweet
word bouquets at his feet and at his conclusions. When she didn’t offer anything other than silent concentration, he came right out and asked if she didn’t feel the same way about fags that he did.

She breathed in deep, taking in breath enough to push out the words. “The reason I’m not saying anything, Andy, is because I don’t exactly understand how you can be as religious as you say you are and still ... still hate. I mean, I’m no big expert on the Bible or anything, but I do know that Jesus was real big on love. He even taught us to love our enemies. Remember him saying that?”

“He didn’t mean fags!”

“Oh come on, Andy,” she chided. “You know better than that! Aren’t you at least a little afraid that hating can keep you out of heaven? I’m not as religious as you are, but well, I do know some things.”

His lips thinned out in silent defiance. “No, absolutely not! What you do or don’t do in this life isn’t all that important.”

“Not important?” Carla repeated.

“Not really,” he said confidently. “You could be Adolf Hitler and put millions of people to death in gas chambers, and you’d still have life eternal if ... if in your last breath, you called on Jesus to wash away your sins, and he’d do it, too. And that means that you’d receive salvation, and once you’ve got that then you’ve really got it made ’cause that means that you can spend eternity doing only nice things like chumming around with God.” Then after a pause, he added, “Now do you understand?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I guess so, but still and all, it doesn’t seem right.”

Chapter 7

A
T PRECISELY 9:25 A.M.
on the seventeenth day of January, the national weather service in Little Rock sent out a bulletin saying that a freak ice storm would be passing through the region around noon. Spencer Matson, the superintendent of schools for Rachetville, made his announcement over the speaker system: “... so let’s get everybody home before the streets become as slippery as cooked okra. But please, please go only as quickly as safety permits. Okay, boys and girls, school is dismissed.”

Andy, with a book-filled backpack slung jauntily over one shoulder, raced for Rachetville High’s front door as though it had been years and years since he had tasted that delicious morsel called freedom. Following close behind were his two best buddies, Doug “the Ironman” Crawford and Mike “the Spider” Horten. They were chanting in unison: ‘Pizza and beer! Pizza and beer! Pizza and beer!”

Since you couldn’t buy a bottle of beer in Rachetville if your very life depended upon it, it was clear to every student, as well as to every faculty member who heard their chant, that these guys were going to be heading to that livelier, albeit more sinful, place seven miles down the highway.