Читать книгу Seven Mile Bridge - Michael M. Biehl - Страница 12

5

The House, Day Two

When I wake up, sunlight is streaming through the flimsy, rattling window in the gable. I have slept the entire night uncovered, in my clothes, sharing my old bed with a half-dozen cardboard boxes. Pictures are scattered over the bed and on the floor. The envelope with the negatives of the photos of my parents, my brother, and me at Lake Audrey is on the pillow next to my head. Thinking I might have prints made from the negatives, I shove the envelope in the back pocket of my jeans and head downstairs to forage for breakfast.

There are about twenty cereal boxes in the pantry, all of them opened, none of them with the liners properly folded. Stale Wheaties, rancid corn flakes, raisin bran from the Pleistocene era. Unless I want another can of beans for breakfast, I must venture out. I have fond memories of the ham and eggs at the counter in Wischki’s Pharmacy on 7th Avenue.

No one in the Keys keeps an ice scraper in his car, so I have to use an old spatula to clear some of the frost off my windshield. The heater in my ’91 Dodge, irrelevant in the Keys, fights a losing battle against the raw Wisconsin morning. I don’t own a winter jacket, and my teeth are chattering as I drive past rows of small Colonial homes and ’50s-era brick ranches. The trees in the yards are bare and the houses have a battened-down appearance.

Sheboygan is colorless in November, even on a sunny day. It is a small, hard-scrabble city that achieved most of its growth in the early part of the last century making furniture, shoes, dairy products, and sausage. Sheboygan is enormously proud of its sausage. Its sole tourist attraction is the annual Bratwurst Festival. For two days in August each year, thousands of people from all over converge on Kiwanis Park to assail their arteries with grilled pig intestines stuffed with fat, batter their eardrums with excessively loud music, and pickle their brains with prodigious quantities of beer.

Wischki’s Pharmacy is gone, a victim, I assume, of the big chain drugstores. The dingy brick building on the corner now houses a nameless tavern with a neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign in the window. Will it and the others like it be driven out someday by giant chain taverns?

Wal-bar.

Down the block is a clean, modern storefront with a new sign: “Photo-Phast – Prints in 1 hour.” I give the Lake Audrey negatives to a very young, pretty Asian woman with straight black hair, rimless glasses, and a somber demeanor. Behind her, several young black-haired, white-coated techs are diligently developing and earnestly enlarging. I don’t remember there being any Chinese-Americans in Sheboygan thirty years ago, but there appear to be quite a few of them now, at least at Photo-Phast.

I manage to wolf down a couple of dry pancakes at McDonald’s, together with coffee in a Styrofoam cup covered with grave warnings about the coffee’s hotness, but none about its insipidness. I avoid the sausage entirely, shaking my head that they would try to pass off these venomous little globules in a city that treats sausage like a religion.

On the way back I realize I can’t face another day of the deplorable liquor selection at the house on Foxglove Lane, so I stop to pick up a decent bottle of bourbon. Do I have a problem? Such things are relative. In Utah, I would be considered an alcoholic, whereas here in Sheboygan I am well within the norm. In the Keys, I am the very soul of moderation; if the tourists are included in the sample group, I am practically a teetotaler.

When I get back to the house it is noticeably colder; the furnace is out. I risk a fire in the fireplace and warm myself by it. I’m not ready to spend the money or the time to bring in a furnace contractor at this point. I want to get right back to those cardboard boxes on the bed.

My old room is chilly, so I rummage around in the packed closet and come up with my high school letter jacket. Its white leather sleeves, cracked with age, come to about the middle of my forearms. Not because my arms have gotten longer, but because the rest of me has gotten larger.

The next box I open has “L.L. Bean” printed on it. It is full of books, and I get a whiff of library smell when I pull it open. The books have a consistent theme. Personnel directories from Falls Dieworks, family albums, high school and college yearbooks. Books with pictures of people we once knew. Here is my high school graduation yearbook, covered in fake maroon leather with a gold bas-relief Viking head. Sheboygan North High School. Raiders, 1972.

I flip immediately to the pictures of the seniors whose last names start with the letter H, and there she is. Delores Ann Hagen.

Lori.

She is wearing a black sweater and has a scarf tied dramatically around her neck. Her body is turned to the side and she is looking over her shoulder, her head slightly tilted. A half-smile, a dimple, and a look in her eyes that tells you she knows exactly the effect she has on boys, and takes pleasure in it. Even in a black and white photo you can tell she is that rarest of colorations: a genuine brown-eyed blonde.

I usually think of myself as slightly ridiculous. For the moment, I have passed beyond slightly. I am fifty-four years old, sitting on a dusty, saggy old bed, shivering, wearing an old jacket that’s about four sizes too small for me, looking down at a tiny picture of an eighteen-year-old girl I haven’t seen in decades and it’s giving me an erection. The picture is only her head and shoulders, she is fully clothed, and the image is not more than an inch and a half wide by two inches high, yet Lori is able somehow to reach out from that page and across thirty-plus years, and get to me just like she always did. It triggers a memory of a warm day in late October.

* *

October, 1971

The temperature was up in the ’70s, rare in Sheboygan at that time of year. By third period they had opened the windows at North High and the feel of summer with the smell of autumn leaves wafted into the classrooms and through the halls.

The fresh air seemed to animate everyone and there was near pandemonium between the bells. I had English third period; so did Lori.

“Indian summer,” she said, smiling at me, her eyes twinkling. She was wearing a lime-green sleeveless top and a pleated skirt that was hemmed about four inches above her knees, which was about as revealing as girls’ clothes got at North High back then. Now I see teenage lasses waiting for the school bus with bare midriffs and their thighs exposed nearly to the hips. Imagine trying to pay attention to algebra surrounded by that. It strikes me as cruelty to animals.

“Why do you suppose they call it ‘Indian summer’?” she asked.

“The origin of the term is not known,” I said with an exaggeratedly authoritative air, having read an item in the news-paper about it that very morning. “One theory is that European settlers saw Indians hunting during warm days in fall.”

“How do you know stuff like that?” She wrinkled her little nose. “You’re too smart. No wonder you’re wrecking the curve.”

Her observation about my effect on the curve was obsolete. By the fall of my senior year, my class rank was tumbling. With what had been going on at my house for the last six months since the letter came from the Bank of Wisconsin, it was almost impossible to study, or even care about exams or grades. The only curves I cared about were Lori’s. But one’s image in high school is a fairly sturdy thing, and my classmates still thought of me as a top student.

I fumfered around for something to say, anything to hold her attention until I could find a natural opportunity to firm up the tentative plans we had made the day before. Had to be cool about this.

“Have you heard the new James Taylor album? Mud Slide Slim?”

“No. Is it as good as Sweet Baby James?”

I shook my head. “Not even close, but what is? It’s got a couple of good songs.”

The bell rang. To hell with cool. “Do you need me to carry your books after school today?” This was our code. It meant I would get on her bus after school and we’d get off at the stop nearest the quarry.

“Oh, yes.” She pretended to lift the two slim volumes in her hands with great effort. “They’re sooo heavy.”

We laughed and took our seats. Most of the rest of that school day is lost in a fog. I remember that in English class we read John Keats’ poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Mr. Osbourne in Physics chided me for not paying attention.

During lunch my friend Bill Sorenson also remarked on my absence of mind. He guessed correctly that I was anticipating a rendezvous with Lori and made obscene hand gestures and mouth noises that drew snickers from the other diners at our table. Most of what passed for conversation among the guys at North was to some degree malevolent, but at least by senior year the cruelty was usually just for laughs. There were still a few social rejects in the class who took some serious flak, but I was not one of them at that point. “Local man” had not yet been “found dead in garage.”

I must have gone to see the cross country coach to get excused from practice, but I don’t recollect what lie I told. Mostly, I remember my head swimming, my face burning, and the time passing like a tortoise on Quaaludes until Lori and I got off the bus.

To get to the quarry you had to walk across a large field of waist-high weeds, crawl through a hole in a barbed-wire fence, and ignore a menacing black and yellow “No Trespassing” sign. The quarry was no longer in operation; the fence and sign were there for safety’s sake. When I was in grade school a kid in my class had drowned there.

The quarrymen had hit groundwater, creating a twenty-acre lagoon that looked as blue as a sapphire when the sky was clear. The walls were striated limestone, notched with coves that afforded privacy. On the floor of the quarry there were piles of crushed stone, mixed gravel and powder, saffron-colored like beach sand.

In keeping with the custom, I removed my shoes as if I were entering a Japanese home and left them outside the cove we had selected as a “Do Not Disturb” sign, confident that this would be respected by any others making use of the quarry. Teenage pranksterism and spite always gave way to the conspiracy of “us against them” where romance was concerned.

“Want to take a dip?” I asked. It was calm and warm in the quarry and a haze of autumn mist and limestone dust hung in the air. A flock of seagulls that had strayed over from Lake Michigan languidly circled the sun-dappled lagoon, which looked intensely inviting. Still, my question was a joke. The water in the lagoon was icy cold in late October, Indian summer or not.

“You first,” said Lori, settling herself on a soft mound of loose scree. She had a businesslike air about her, less playful than she normally was when we were alone together. I assumed this was because of the plans we had made. We had been to the quarry before, but all we had done previously was neck, pet, and smoke cigarettes.

“Have you been to the drugstore?” she asked.

“Yep.” I had a three-pack of Trojans in my pocket, the first condoms I had ever seen, let alone purchased. Buying them had not embarrassed me, but I hadn’t gone to Wischki’s for them, where the pharmacist knew me. I had practiced with one of the Trojans the night before, so I wouldn’t be awkward with it.

“Me, too,” she said. She opened her purse and pulled out a little can with a pink top and a plastic tube about the size of a small panetella. A bit of white fabric edged with elastic emerged from the purse. I realized a moment later that Lori had already removed her panties and stuffed them in her purse. When did she manage that? I observed the deftness with which she filled the plastic tube with foam, its plunger rising like a meat thermometer, and the agility with which she laid back and tilted her pelvis, her dainty hands and the foam-filled tube disappearing under her pleated skirt. I knew then that Lori had not merely practiced the night before, as I had. She had done this many times before.

What a load off my mind that was.

Plenty of other worries still plagued me, though. Self-consciousness about my inexperience, furtiveness about being seen, fear of getting Lori pregnant in spite of our precautions, concern about one of us getting injured on the jagged outcroppings of limestone poking through the gravel around us, insecurity about what was happening to my family, just to name a few. It had been six months since the Bank of Wisconsin letter had come and an undercurrent of anguish had become chronic for me.

Having completed the injection, Lori pulled her top off over her head, slipped off her pleated skirt and looked at me with impatience. I stripped down to my white T-shirt and unfurled the condom onto myself with minimal dither. We lay down on our sides, facing each other. I remember she had on her “special occasion” Jean Naté perfume, a pink bra, and startling dark blue fingernail polish, but many of the subtler traits I usually found so intoxicating about Lori — the silkiness of her hair, the sweetness of her voice, the softness and sheen of her skin — were obscured by the smog of my own anxiety until Lori took matters into her own hands. Literally. She put her little hand on my chest, rolled me gently onto my back, got on top and guided me into her.

Her eyes closed and her head rolled back. She wasn’t nervous at all. She was . . . intent. Whether this was from desire for me, or just desire to get the clumsy first time with me out of the way, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. Once penetration had been accomplished, I caught a wave that lifted me up and carried me away from everything that had been bothering me that day, and for days and weeks and months before, and suddenly, for the first time in memory, the whole world felt good. The weight of Lori’s body on mine, her hands, her skin, the still, hazy air around us, the blood moving in my veins, even the hunk of limestone poking me between the shoulder blades felt good, and it all just kept feeling better and better until the wave broke. Then a low moan that sounded nothing like Lori came from this golden-haloed angel hovering over me, the same sound coming from me, then a delicious flash in my face and from the base of my spine, and an absolute conviction that this was without a doubt the single finest moment of my life, accompanied by the bubble-gum sweet taste of Lori’s mouth and the exotic squawks and squeals of seagulls on the lagoon.

In the aftermath I thought about the Keats poem we had studied in English that day, and had new appreciation for it, especially the part that goes, “Then I felt like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken.” We remained motionless, I don’t know for how long, until Lori said, “I’m cold,” and I realized it was getting dark. It took a long time to brush the limestone dust off our clothes.

As we were leaving the cove, Lori said, “Isn’t that your brother?” I looked in the direction she was pointing. About two hundred yards away an athletically built male was scrambling down the collapsed wall of the quarry, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him. Even in the dim light I could tell Lori was right, it was Jamie. He was moving swiftly down the steep slope with the power and grace of an NFL halfback. Jamie had teased me many times, claiming to have seen me with Lori in the quarry, and I wondered, how long had he been up there? What had he seen? What had freaked him out so badly he was sprinting through the dusky quarry like he had a pack of hounds at his heels?

Lori and I waited until Jamie was out of sight around a corner on the far side of the lagoon, then we crawled out of the quarry and through the hole in the fence. Halfway across the field, Lori stopped and gave me a kiss. We were hip deep in prairie grass.

“You better not walk me home,” she said. “I told my mom and dad I was going to Denise Janacek’s house to study after school. They might see you.”

Smart girl. Her cover story was better than mine. I was supposedly at cross country practice, which would have had me home before dark, and I had more than a mile walk back to the house ahead of me. Over an hour late. But I wasn’t worried about it. I wasn’t worried about anything. No matter what repercussions I had to face at home, it was worth it.

“Want to do this again sometime?” said Lori. She batted her eyelashes facetiously.

“How about tomorrow?” I said, although I was thinking, How about right now?

“My, my.” She put her hand on my face. “How am I going to handle you?”

That was a laugh. Lori could handle me with both hands tied behind her back, and we both knew it.

“All right, sure,” she said. “Weather permitting. Call me after dinner, okay?”

I was in mid-season condition and could easily have run all the way home, but I didn’t. I strolled, and savored the rare, sweet evening air and a feeling of satisfaction that was rarer and sweeter still. Oak leaves descended in seeming slow motion from the night sky, and Venus beamed like a signal fire above the dark horizon. The only thought I gave my parents was to wonder how they could have done for twenty years what Lori and I just did and end up hating each other over money. It seemed the most foolish and pathetic thing I could imagine, and I swore it would never happen to me and Lori.

I was surprised to find the house dark when I got home.

“Mom? Dad?”

My mother had been working as a checker at Piggly Wiggly for three months. She was always there by the time I got home from school on days when I took the late bus. My dad was out of work and was usually puttering at his desk in the basement before dinner. I knew where Jamie was.

The kitchen showed no sign that anyone had even started preparing dinner. I decided to check if my mother’s car was in the garage and went out the side door. The garage was closed, but from twenty feet away, I could hear a car engine rumbling and could see exhaust billowing out from under the door.