Where the Kissing Never Stops (12 page)

“Good Christ,” he said, hanging up the phone. “They act like I’m asking them to rezone the world.”

“Who’s that?” I asked politely.

“The city council.”

“Is this for the Garden of Gardner?”

He brightened. “Rachel told you. What about it? Tell me what you think.”

“I don’t know exactly. It seems…”

“Do you like Westgate?”

“The old mall? No, I…”

“Good for you. Westgate’s everything a mall doesn’t have to be. It’s overscaled and it’s dull. People only go there because it’s more fun than downtown.”

“There isn’t much downtown to go to, thanks to Westgate.”

“You think the mall pulled people out of the city? I think Bradleyville drove people to the mall. There’s always something to look at in a mall, always something to touch. And it’s all free and it’s all safe.”

“I thought you just said it was dull.”

“Compared to the Garden it is. Compared to the Garden it’s like an old stripper who never takes off her clothes. Who cares anyway, right?”

“I care, that’s who.”

“About what?”

“Uh… malls.”

He was getting excited, and poured himself some coffee from a silver carafe.

“Really? Have you ever been to Milan?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s where old Giuseppe Mengoni started it all in 1865, and it’s still great: it’s the original hundred-percent location.”

I wondered what Rachel was doing upstairs, but I dutifully asked, “What’s a hundred-percent location?”

“A place that everybody has to pass and there’s something going on twenty-four hours a day.”

“Sounds good if you have the pay-toilet concession.”

He frowned, but not at my silly joke. “That’s what I want for Bradleyville. We’re living in the center of the United States.” He tapped on the table with his blunt but manicured index finger. “This could be the one-hundred-percent location for the republic.”

“I’m almost ready,” Rachel shouted from somewhere above us.

“Are you being nice to my daughter?” he asked abruptly.

“Or do I just hit her with the hose in places where it won’t show?”

He snorted instead of laughed. “I apologize. It’s just that Rachel has never been mistreated for an instant by anyone anywhere. I know you’re good to her. She likes you. She told me so herself.”

“I like her, too.”

“What about Kramer?”

“I don’t like him as much, but then we haven’t been dating as long.”

He smiled that patented half-smile. “Irreverent,” he said, “but not abrasive.” And he looked at me like I was one of my mother’s expensive wines. “And you know how to cut through the crap. I like that. I might be able to use you, Walker.”

I didn’t know what to say. Was he offering me a job? If so, doing what? Cutting through the crap?

“I talked to your mother and I talked to Kramer. She said to ask you.”

“What about?”

“Talking to Kramer.”

I shrugged. “Talk to him about…”

“Selling. Selling your land. Both of you. Or at least giving me an option to buy.”

“I thought he wanted to sell.”

“I thought he did, too. Now I’m hearing a lot of b.s. about the old homestead.”

Just then Rachel came downstairs, sleepy and cute in low boots and jeans.

“Be careful,” said her father, a comment that had as many layers as a wedding cake.

Outside of town, Sully and Peggy sat on the hood of the Cadillac and waited; four Styrofoam cups of coffee steamed by the hood ornament, and Rachel reached for one with both hands.

“I must be nuts,” she said, smiling. “Where’s the sun?” Then to Peggy, “You look great, kid.”

“You like it?” She flounced the wide skirts of her prom dress. Or rather she flounced half her prom dress.

“The Cub Scout shirt is a nice touch,” said Sully. He pointed to the sleeve. “This poor little weenie only got one stripe and that was for deportment. I can just see him sitting in the corner being good.”

“I only got two,” I said. “One for deportment and the other for starting fires.”

“They gave a stripe for arson?” asked Peggy.

“Campfires.”

Peggy rolled the sleeves of her shirt up to reveal a single pink opera glove. Then she tied the shirttails at her navel, revealing an inch or two of the whitest skin I’d ever seen.

“Let’s go to work,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s plant them seeds, get in the crop, and get rich.”

I pointed. “Here comes Mr. Kramer now,” and we watched his truck negotiate the dirt road, then stop and shudder as he got out. Mr. Kramer motioned for us, then patted the hood consolingly as the old Chevy quaked one last time, then settled down with a hiss.

I introduced my friends. If he thought twice about somebody in half a dress, it didn’t show; he calmly shook Peggy’s gloved hand, then touched his cap politely.

“I saw Rachel last night,” he said. “Her father poured so much wine in me I felt like a tough piece of meat he was trying to marinate.” Then he turned to me. “I tried to get hold of you the other day and got your momma instead.”

“I was probably in school. Did you want…”

“Nice woman, your mother. Said to talk to you. Said the land was yours and you were grown-up enough to do the right thing. Even apologized for being in bed at ten o’clock in the morning. Said she was a dancer and it was hard work. Made me wonder afterward if I might have seen her on the TV.”

“A dancer?” said Rachel. “I thought —”

“Bartender mostly,” Peggy said quickly. “But she can dance if…” She looked at me helplessly.

“I thought she was a waitress.”

“Well,” I said, “she’s a bartender-waitress.”

Then, since I had the hyphens out anyway, I didn’t see any harm in using one more. “Actually a bartender-waitress-dancer in this little club, uh, bar-restaurant…”

“In Kansas City,” Sully said. “We went once, remember, to pick her up after work?”

“Oh, yeah. And it was nice: quiet, clean, a really nice neighborhood. And she doesn’t have to dance much, just when things get slow.”

“Or really busy,” said Sully when Rachel looked bewildered.

“How weird,” she said, shaking her head.

“What’d you call me about?” I asked Mr. Kramer, desperate for any diversion.

“Oh, about this place. I just wondered if you were dead set on selling.”

“Aren’t you?”

He shook his head slowly. “DiPrima neither, and none of the Fiscus boys. It’s not just us bumpkins, either. People in Bradleyville ain’t so sure anymore. Little by little not everybody’s sold on their hometown being the hub of the universe.”

I guess we all turned to look at Rachel. She just grinned and said sensibly, “Well, we can’t settle it this morning. Anyway, it’s Daddy’s problem. Why don’t we do what we came for and get to work on this place?”

“Here’s all there is to it,” Mr. Kramer said, motioning for Sully and me to lift four or five sacks of grain out of the scarred truck bed. He handed each of us a wide sling. “This here goes over one shoulder,” he said. “The seeds go into the bottom, then you walk along and scatter it like you’re feeding chickens.”

“With our hands?” asked Peggy, looking at her indigo nails.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Everybody does it this way?”

“No, ma’am. Nobody does it this way. There’s machines could seed this section here before noon, but this is how we used to do it and just about the only way four people can be part of things.”

“I’m ready,” said Rachel, holding open her scratchy burlap. “Fill ’er up.”

A few minutes later, Mr. Kramer told us to spread out. We made a ragged line, throwing seeds every which way. Down on one end, Mr. Kramer walked as easily as a sailor, his right arm moving as smoothly as any MC’s introducing star after star. Peggy, beside him, picked up the rhythm first, then Sully, Rachel, and me. We began to work more or less together and the grain went out from us, long scallops in the air, falling without a sound.

It was pretty in a way; Mr. Kramer so smooth and professional; Peggy grinning, her skirt rocking like a bell in a gale; Rachel intent, biting her lower lip, trying to do it right; Sully and me horsing around, throwing handfuls of seed at each other, then pretending to be blinded.

“Look!” Rachel shouted, pointing behind her like someone in a sci-fi movie who has just spotted the nine-foot grasshoppers. We whirled to see — birds. They were having breakfast at our expense.

“What do we do?”

“Nuke ’em,” said Sully.

“Send out for cats,” Peggy suggested.

“I’d say drop a little extra seed.” I glanced at Mr. Kramer, who had just gone on without us, his hand passing through the air in front of him almost jauntily, like someone coming in the door and sailing his hat toward the couch.

We worked that way all morning, and it was hard. At half past ten or so, Peggy staggered over to Rachel and presently they announced they were going to buy lunch for us all. Sully hung in a little longer, then dropped out as we turned again near the cars. Mr. Kramer and I closed ranks and kept up the pace. It was hypnotic in a way: the scrunch of grain in my bare hand, the cool, clean feel of it in my palm where everything else was hot and gritty, the whoosh of the throw, the look of it in the sun flashing like rice at a wedding party.

Every time I worked out there, driving the tractor, cutting back grass along the fence row, hoeing at the weeds that seemed to come up overnight, I just didn’t think — not about school, not about the future, not about my mom. Working, I thought just about what I was doing. Or even better, I thought about nothing, my mind as clean and white as the plate I set out for my dinner at night.

Still, I was glad to see Peggy and Rachel come back. And I may as well admit it: I expected Mr. Kramer to pat me on the back and say what a good job I’d done. Instead, he just took the sling off my shoulder and threw it in the back of the truck.

“Are we finished?” I asked.

“For today. Anyway, I am.” If he didn’t praise me, he didn’t criticize, either. I guess he figured people did their best and that was that.

He ambled over to where everybody was sitting, politely took off his battered old hat, and said to Rachel, without any irony, “You can tell your daddy I’m thinking on his generous offer.”

“We brought plenty,” she said. “Eat with us.”

“I think I’ll just go on home and lie down.”

We watched him walk to his car; then we all waved.

“It must be funny to be alone,” Rachel said.

“Boy,” said Peggy. “My mom left me alone. I mean they probably cut the cord, she jumped off the table, and off she went to the mall for a new red dress. And speaking of shopping for a red dress, I don’t think it’d be so bad to have another mall.”

Rachel agreed, suddenly so dreamy it was like she’d heard the magic word. “They’re special places.” Then she quoted her father, source of all mall wisdom. “They’ve got their own rules and their own reality.”

“What happens to all this?” I took a huge bite of the last sandwich, one that had slipped off the blanket. I didn’t bother to wipe off the dirt, though. I’d show them: I liked land so much I would eat it.

“Walker, that’s progress.”

“Yeah? That’s some term for a steady decline.”

“I get along okay in malls,” Peggy said. “I just sort of zone out and spend.”

“You’re the Captivated Shopper,” Rachel explained, “a Star in the Retail Drama.”

I could hear those capital letters and it got on my nerves.

“And that’s good?”

Rachel began to get defensive. “Everything there is upbeat. Can that be bad? People have enough crime and stuff in the real world. They don’t want to go downtown and look at the empty buildings. At the mall they don’t have to think about things like that. The weather is always the same; they can afford to talk to a stranger; and they don’t ever have to be afraid of getting ripped off. Tenants have to be honest or they’ll get kicked out of the mall. It’s in their lease.”

“That’s just the point. I don’t want people to have to be honest because it’s in their lease. I just want them to be honest, period.”

“People in the mall care, and not just because they have to.”

“No, they don’t. They care as long as people are lined up at the cash register.”

Sully and Peggy followed all this like tennis fans, their heads whipping back and forth at each exchange.

“Well, they’re merchants, Walker, not missionaries.”

“They aren’t even merchants. Just ask somebody in a mall to wait while you go home and get the wallet you forgot, or even better, promise you’ll pay him tomorrow. He’ll laugh in your face.”

“That’s no way to run a business.”

“Yeah, well, my dad used to forget his wallet all the time. I’d ride back down on my bike with the money.”

“Actually,” said Sully, “a mall is like a giant womb, so in a way shopping is like a mass return to the —”

But I wasn’t finished. “And as for your father saving anything, like he claimed this morning, grow up. He just wants to be king. He makes up a kingdom, modestly calls it the Garden of Gardner, eats up a little town in the process, but what the —”

“He’s not a king!” Rachel pounded her knees in frustration. “And he’s not bad. He’s good. He is.”

No one knew exactly what to do then. We all stared off in different directions like lost travelers.

Finally Peggy said brightly, “So, I guess this means shopping is out of the question.”

“This is perfect,” said Sully, watching the two girls stroll away. “You argued, you laughed at yourselves, you apologized.”

“So?”

“So Rachel really likes you. I think she wants you, pardner. She wants your little buns.”

“Well, she can’t have them. All my pants would fit funny.”

“You know, Rachel looks better these days.”

“She said Peggy went through her closet with her.”

“Not just her clothes.”

“Peggy cut her hair, too.”

He waved away my simple facts. “Not just that stuff. She looks more together somehow. Maybe I was just wrong about her. I mean, she’s too blocky for me, but —”

“Blocky?”

He drew a rectangle in the air. “Blocky. From the shoulders right down to the hips.”

“I really beg your pardon. Rachel’s got a waist.”