Authors: Dan Wakefield
There was a soft rap on the door, and he quickly drew his hand off his cock.
“Sonny?” his mother said.
“Yes?”
“Are you up?”
“No.”
“I have to go the office now.”
“O.K.”
“I left you a tray. Outside your door.”
“O.K.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“I'll be back around two.”
“O.K.”
“You don't have to get up if you don't want.”
“I will. In a minute.”
“If anyone calls, I'll be at the office.”
“I know.”
There was a pause. He could still hear his mother's breathing, and he lay motionless, both hands innocently lying under his head on the pillow.
“I love you,” she said.
“Me too,” he answered.
He couldn't make himself say, “I love you,” to his mother anymore, and when she said it to him and waited for reply, he said, “Me too,” which he realized was ambiguous. It might either mean he loved her too, or it might mean he loved himself, too. That was probably closer to the truth. He heard her tiptoe away, down the stairs. Then the car boomed and skrcaked from the drive. His prick was limp; he had even lost the semi. He got up and opened the door, and took the tray in and set it on his desk. There was a white-meat chicken sandwich with the crusts cut off, a big glass of Pepsi with ice, a piece of lemon chiffon pie, two brownies, and the morning
Star
. He took a sip of the Pepsi, and then went back to bed with the sports section. He might have never got up at all if Gunner hadn't called.
“How 'bout that film we shot?” Gunner asked. “I thought we were going to have a big developing bash.”
“Oh, yeh. Right. We ought to do it,” Sonny said.
“How's about right now?”
“Sure, I mean, like an hour or so would be O.K. I have to finish something up first.”
What he had to do was get dressed and get himself together, but he wouldn't have dreamed of admitting to Gunner he was still lying around the house just vegetating, halfway through the damn day.
Sonny got a real lift from just being in the darkroom, and having Gunner there to watch and to learn made it even better. Him, Sonny, able to teach something to a guy like Gunner, able to give him some bit of knowledge he sought, that was really something. It was like being able to bestow a gift on someone you liked, and it was really the best kind of gift, much better than the kind you could wrap in a package.
Gunner was really absorbed and eager to know. Like everything he did, he wanted to dive right into it and find out everything he could about it, and his questions and admiring comments at Sonny's knowledge of the developing process made Sonny actually feel like Somebody.
The most exciting part was when you put the blank paper in the chemical bath that would bring the picture to life; the forms taking shape, the gathering of the darks and shadows and outlines until the actual picture came forth in its full detail. That was a kind of creation, a kind of magic. It always gave Sonny goose pimples, and he had the feeling Gunner felt the same way about it.
Sonny had got some good action stuff, but most of Gunner's was fuzzy and blurred. Sonny told him about how you corrected that with shutter speed and all, and assured him he'd get the hang of it soon. He figured he really would, too, but it was nice to be able to reassure him.
Afterward they had a couple cool brews, and Sonny felt clean and strong.
“You really got it down cold, all that stuff,” Gunner said admiringly.
Sonny smiled and looked down at his brew. “Shee-it,” he said. With appropriate modesty.
They planned to go out and shoot some more film real soon. But when Gunner called the next day, he had plans of a more exotic nature.
“We're choppin' in tall cotton,” he announced.
“Yeh?”
“No shit. Nina's got a date to go to Churchill Downs for the races. She'll be in Louisville overnight and the place'll be ours.”
“Hot damn.”
“Can you line up something for Saturday night?”
“Sure, I think so.”
“One of us can have the bedroom and the other the couch.”
“Great.”
“Remember DeeDee Armbrewster? Shortley girl I used to be pinned to and all that crap. She just got home from I.U. graduation and gave me a buzz. Sounds like she's hot to trot.”
“Great.”
“Yeh. I'm a little on the horny side.”
Gunner was used to getting it regular. Sonny said very casually he'd line up something for himself and be ready for action. When he hung up, he felt a little panicky, and he went to his room and bolted down the lunch his mother had left. Then he put on a pair of undershorts and lit a cigarette. He didn't like to smoke in the nude, for fear a hot ash might fall on his dick and damage it beyond repair. He was always thinking of things like that.
The problem now was who to get for Saturday night. If only this was happening back in Shortley or maybe even in college, he could get a lot of girls who'd just want to go on a date if they were going to be doubling with the great Gunner Casselman. Maybe some still even felt that way. Maybe that sexy Phyllis who Sonny saw at the Riviera. She used to go to Northwood Methodist, but now she was at nursing school, which probably meant she went all the way. Nurses were supposed to do everything. Sonny had meant to call her but for some reason he had put it off, and now it was too late. If he wasn't absolutely sure she did the big trick, he didn't want to take her to Gunner's and feel like a greenass, just sitting out in the living room playing records while Gunner was humping away on DeeDee Armbrewster right in the next room. The only girl he was sure of was Buddie, and so, even though he didn't really want to screw her anymore very much, he knew he had better take her. What the hell would Gunner think of him if he couldn't produce a girl he could lay?
Gunner had been getting his ever since high school, everyone knew that, even Sonny. Even if you weren't on the inside, the word got down to you somehow. Gunner did it right in the school building. He did it with Patty Mandrake on a table in the biology lab, he did it with Sissy Glisson down in the boiler room, he did it with DeeDee Armbrewster in the bushes by the side entrance of the building between the acts of the Annual Shortley Variety Show. He even did it in the back of the auditorium when they showed free movies at lunchtime. There were teachers snooping around sometimes but Gunner had Blow Mahoney for a lookout. Blow got his name because the thing he liked most in life was getting blown, and he talked about it all the time and greeted people by saying, “Hey, blow!” Sometimes he used to drive around the block at lunchtime in his old Model T, and when he first went around, you'd see Sandy Masterson sitting next to him, but then by the second time around you wouldn't see Sandy at all, you'd just see Blow himself, driving along with a look of incredible ecstasy. When he didn't drive to school he and Sandy would go to the lunchtime movies and do it there in the darkened back of the auditorium; and since Blow always sat upright in his seat while Sandy was giving it to him, he was happy to keep a lookout for Gunner at the same time, while Gunner was making it with DeeDee behind the last row of seats. Blow was happy to help out a friend, as long as it didn't interfere with his own pastime.
Maybe because not many guys made out as much, everyone talked about the ones who did. Everyone in the whole city seemed to know what happened to Gunner when the night before the opening round of the state basketball tournament his senior year he twisted his ankle jumping out of the second-story bedroom window of Alison MacAdoo, whose father had come home unexpectedly early from a concert of the Scottish Rite Chorus. When Gunner hobbled onto the floor the next afternoon, his ankle all taped, the whole fieldhouse let up a roar, and everyone cheered, “We Want Gunner,” even the kids from other schools. He was a hero even though he didn't get to play. It was like that in college, too, and even though Sonny was down at I.U. and not even in a fraternity, he heard stories of Gunner's exploits at DePauw, like the time he got caught naked with a Theta on the roof of the Sigma Chi house by Mother Simmons and lost his scholarship for a full semester. And Gunner himself said Japan was the best he ever had.
Buddie, of course, was glad to accept Sonny's invitation to “a party over at Casselman's place,” which is how he had described the evening to her. Sonny consoled himself that even though he'd rather have a sexy new babe to go with, it would be a relief to have a comfortable private place to make out. Usually he and Buddie, like most everyone else they knew, had to do it in cars and on golf courses and fields of deserted farmhouses, where you were always getting caught in barbed wire or rolling onto old cowshit or worrying about getting bushwhacked. It seemed like unless you were married and had your own place, you had to be a combination acrobat, woodsman, and stud to ever make out. Which is why some kids got married, so they could fuck when they wanted without getting thorns in their ass or find themselves putting on a show for a bunch of bushwhackers. Sonny used to go bushwhacking himself when he was in high school, driving around with a carload of guys and sneaking up on some poor couple making out and then flashing a goddam spotlight on them and hooting and jeering and yelling a lot of dirty stuff and running away after spoiling things. It was a favorite sport.
Sonny really was hot for the idea of having Gunner's place to do it in, without being bothered, but the trouble was, when the evening of the “party” came, he wasn't at all in the mood. He'd have much rather gone out boozing with Gunner, or developed some pictures, or even just stayed home and watched television. That was always happening to him. It seemed like the need for sex came in waves, and for some reason whenever the sex was available the need was at its lowest ebb. The times when he seemed to be drowning with desire there was never anything around. Now with this great setup he couldn't have cared less. If it just was a date he had with Buddie, he'd have made some excuse and got out of it, but he wouldn't dream of backing out and letting Gunner suspect he wasn't a regular guy who took it whenever he could get it.
Gunner came by and honked for Sonny after supper, and they went to pick up DeeDee.
“Listen, ole buddy, would you mind coming in?” Gunner asked him when they got to the Armbrewsters'. “DeeDee's old lady'll talk my ear off. She's one of these amateur patriots, ya know?”
Sonny was afraid he knew all rightâhis mother was friends with some of those ladiesâbut he was happy to make things easier for Gunner if he could by going along. It was like talking to religious people, you felt more comfortable if you had a buddy with you.
Mrs. Armbrewster was a large woman with combs in her graying hair and a pair of rimless glasses that hung on a velvet ribbon around her neck. Mr. Armbrewster wasn't around, and Gunner said later he seldom was; he worked long hours at his office and bowled a great deal.
“DeeDee isn't quite ready,” Mrs. Armbrewster said, “and I'm so glad to have a moment to talk with you young men.
Veterans
, I should say.”
Gunner had introduced Sonny as a friend who had also just got out of the service, which was the biggest kind of buildup you could give to Mrs. Armbrewster. She pinched her glasses onto her nose and asked the young men to step into her study for a moment if they would. As she turned to lead them, Gunner gave Sonny a nudge with his elbow and rolled his eyes up into his head.
The study was a dim, secretive little room with a desk, a large metal office file, a silk American flag on a gold tripod stand, and a Statue of Liberty lamp with a lightbulb in its hand instead of a torch. On the walls were a framed Preamble to the Constitution, a certificate of membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, an aerial view of Mt. Vernon, a bearded Jesus kneeling under a heavenly spotlight, a photo of General MacArthur smoking his corncob pipe, and a homemade sampler that said “The Price of Liberty Is Eternal Vigilance.” Catherine Millbank Armbrewster had committed herself to that vigilance, clipping items every day from newspapers and magazines on the latest Red activities and maintaining her own private file (though private, it was always at the disposal of the proper authorities, as she had written in a confidential letter to J. Edgar Hoover himself) of state and local communist subversion, ranging all the way from the teaching of the Robin Hood story in public schools (with the help of Mrs. Armbrewster and other patriots, this Marxist text with its message of rob-the-rich-and-give-to-the-poor was successfully banned from the Indiana state school system), to the brazen attempt by the local branch of the pinko American Civil Liberties Union to secure the hallowed halls of the Indianapolis War Memorial for a speech by the left-leaning industrialist Paul Hoffman. With the American Legion leading the way, this plot was also nipped in the bud, rasing howls of protest from what Mrs. Armbrewster thought of as the International-Jew editorial writers of the Eastern Commie Inner Circle rag,
The New York Times
.
Mrs. Armbrewster pulled out a drawer of her file, and Gunner and Sonny sat down on a little two-seater couch, trying not to look at each other.
“You men have served,” she said. She took Gunner's hand and said, “You fought. You bled.”
Gunner squirmed. “I caught a little shrapnel,” he admitted, omitting the location of the wound.
“And your friend?” she asked, turning her gaze on Sonny.
“I was stationed in Kansas City,” he said. “Public Information.”
She patted his hand. “
Some
one has to do the paper work,” she consoled him.
“Absolutely!” Gunner chimed in.
“And now what?” Mrs. Armbrewster asked. Her eyes glimmered meaningfully behind the spectacles.
Sonny looked to Gunner.
“Now?” asked Gunner.
“It isn't over,” Mrs. Armbrewster darkly announced. She picked a book off her desk and handed it to Gunner, saying, “You were there. You must read this.”