Kinflicks (6 page)

“That's life,” she concluded. She concluded many of her conversations with the phrase, like a fundamentalist preacher's “Praise the Lord.” When she said it, though, the implication was not that one should accept the various indignities of corporeal existence with grace, but rather that one should shift one's focus to the dignities of the dead.

“No more football,” she added offhandedly. “You're a young woman now.” I knew at that moment what Beethoven must have felt when informed that his ears would never hear music again. No more football? She might just as well have told Arthur Murray never to dance again. How was I to exist without the sweet smack of my shoulder pads against some halfback's hips, without the delicious feel of my cleats piercing the turf? I went upstairs, and as I exchanged my shoulder pads for a sanitary pad and elastic belt, I knew that menstruation might just as well have been a gastrointestinal hemorrhage in terms of its repercussions on my life.

But before long, I learned that the same body that could butt a blocking machine down a football field could be used in ways more subtle but just as effective. For example, it could be made to twist and twirl and prance. Its hips could swing and slither with the same skill required to elude enclosing tacklers. Its budding breasts, heretofore regarded as a humiliating defect that distorted the number on my jersey, could be played up to advantage with a Never-Tell padded bra. In short, I was transformed from a left tackle into a flag swinger, into the new girl friend of Joe Bob Sparks. I got to be the one to bear his abuse for giving him blue balls, and eventually
I
got to be the one to give him hand jobs at the Family Drive-In.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We started out together on a more modest scale. Joe Bob picked me up before school the Monday following the victory dance. He roared up our white quartz driveway in a white Ford convertible, which had “Sparkplug” painted in red on the rear fender. His horn blared. As Mother stood looking with horror through the green velvet curtains in the dining room, I slipped out the door and minced my way to the car, completely concealing the fact that, until recently, I could have vied with Joe Bob himself on line drives. I was wearing cordovan loafers with leather tassels and a madras shirtwaist with a Peter Pan collar. Its skirt came to the middle of my kneecaps. Joe Bob looked at me with his insane smile and said softly, “Say hey, Ginny!”

I smiled a smile of infinite promise and climbed in, arranging my skin to cover my kneecaps, which were padded with scar tissue from being tackled in cinders in the end zone on touchdowns. Joe Bob wore tan chinos and a plaid Gant shirt and penny loafers. We each nodded to ourselves in satisfaction that the other, when not disguised as flag swinger or tailback, looked clean and pressed and identical to every other member of the Hullsport High student body — with the exception of the hoods like Clem Cloyd, in their unspeakable tight studded blue jeans with pegged legs, and black ankle boots and dark T-shirts and windbreakers.

On Friday night we cruised Hull Street in Sparkplug with its top down, along with all the other students worthy of note from Hullsport High. We started at the church circle and drove slowly up Hull Street through three intersections to the train station, Sparkplug's engine idling with noisy impatience. At the train station we circled around and headed back down Hull Street to the church circle, with Joe Bob playfully revving the engine in competition with whoever was stopped next to us at the lights. Then we repeated the circuit.

The other cars accompanying us in this rite contained either established couples from school, or a bunch of unclaimed boys on the prowl, or a bunch of unclaimed girls trying to feign lack of interest. Occasionally, at a stop light, as though compelled by cosmic signals, half the unclaimed girls in one car would leap out and exchange places with half the unclaimed boys in another car in an adolescent version of fruit-basket-upside-down; it was as though each car were an atom exchanging electrons with another atom so as to neutralize their charges. From the air it would have looked like an intricate square-dance figure. It was the modern American adaptation of the old Spanish custom in which the single young people stroll around the town plaza eying each other with scarcely concealed desperation and desire, in full view of placid but watchful adults. In this case the chaperones were the highway patrolmen, not long ago students at Hullsport High themselves, but gone over now to the enemy. Taking their revenge on us for their no longer being young and unfettered by families, they liked nothing better than to ticket someone for driving in the wrong direction around the church circle. Their formerly athletic bodies gone to flab under their khaki shirts, they now cruised for a living and delighted in breaking up back-seat tussles on dark dirt roads. As I soon learned — which was why I finally “went all the way,” as the teen jargon discreetly put it, only when locked securely in the bomb shelter in my basement. But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

After half a dozen trips up and down Hull Street, Joe Bob pulled into a parking spot. We got out and sauntered along the sidewalk and looked in the shop windows at the latest in teen fashions, each subtly instructing the other on what outfits to buy next. We lingered long in front of the display windows of Sparks Shoe Store, owned by Joe Bob's father. We both agreed that it had the nicest selection of shoes in town. I noted with approval that, each time we came to a Dixie cup or a candy wrapper wantonly discarded, Joe Bob would pick it up, wrist weights clanking on the sidewalk, and deposit it in a trash can saying “Keep Hullsport Beautiful.”

“You can hardly walk down the street anymore without tripping over somebody's garbage,” I said appreciatively.

“Do whut?” he asked with a grin, chomping on his Juicy Fruit with his front teeth.

“Garbage. People throw it all over the place.”

He nodded serenely, munching.

We got back into Sparkplug and did another half dozen circuits of Hull Street. After which we pulled into the parking lot of the most popular drive-in restaurant, the Dew Drop Inn. The Dew Drop had asphalt ridges in its parking lot to discourage its inclusion in our cruising route. Joe Bob went over the bumps reverently, careful not to scrape his chrome tail pipes. But the following year Clem and I raced over them on his cycle, leaning from side to side, like Eddie Holzer negotiating moguls on cross-country skis on the slopes of Vermont.

Through the microphone next to the car, Joe Bob ordered six half-pints of milk in waxed cardboard containers for himself and a small Seven-Up laced with cherry syrup for me. When the carhop brought them, Joe Bob said, “Thank you, ma'am,” in his soft babyish voice with his mad contorted smile, all the time eying her ample chest out the window. Then he removed his wad of Juicy Fruit and stuck it on the dashboard. One after another, he opened the cartons and tossed down the milk, scarcely pausing for breath. He winked at me and smiled dementedly and said, “Trainin'.”

I had just begun to sip my cherry Seven-Up by the time he had drained all six of his milk containers. He stuck his Juicy Fruit back in his mouth and turned to watch me drink. The be-bosomed carhop whipped by, and Joe Bob's eyes followed her chest. Finally he said, “One time I was here with this cousin of mine. Jim, he's got him this Fairlane 500 with push-button windows. Well, that girl over yonder — I
think
it was that ole girl — anyhow, she brung him this pack of Pall Malls. The window was partway down, and ole Jim, he reached over to roll the window the rest of the way down. Well, he wasn't watching' what he was doing'. He was lookin' at his change to see if he'd have to break a bill to pay her.” I nodded frantic encouragement. I'd never before heard him say so many words at one time. He took a deep breath and continued in his scarcely audible voice. “Well — it turns out he's not rollin' the window
down,
he's rollin' it
up
!' His grin was pushing his crew cut up. I hadn't caught the joke yet. I smiled uncertainly, hoping for a punch line.

After waiting for an appropriate amount of time, I said hesitantly, “I'm not sure I get it.”

He blushed. “Well, she was standin' right up against the window of the Fairlane, see? The window rolled
up
without him knowin' it, and he like to chopped off her — you know.” I flinched reflex-like, imagining the pain of having a push-button window close on my breasts; then I too blushed at this open reference to crucial female anatomy, even though it was obviously the cornerstone of our impending relationship; then I grinned idiotically as the tale began to appeal to me; then I smiled sweetly at Joe Bob for his delicacy in referring to tits as “you know.”

Joe Bob pushed back his left wrist weight and glanced at his watch. He sat up straight, hurriedly flashed his headlights, and started up the motor with a roar. The carhop, blessed with chest, sauntered out to retrieve the tray. As Joe Bob threw the car into gear and backed out, he said anxiously, “I like to forgot training. Lord, Coach'll kill me!” We roared down Hull Street in the direction of my house.

“What do you mean?” I demanded, injured.

“Got to be in bed by ten,” he notified me grimly, weaving Sparkplug in and out of the frivolous cruising traffic.

“You're
kidding?”
My heart sank. A ten o'clock curfew definitely dampened the possibilities for lingering exchanges of sweet nothings. He dumped me at the foot of our driveway and left me to find my own way through the magnolia thicket to the house.

Our courtship was like a silent movie. In those days before the raising of the public's seat-belt consciousness, the progress of a couple's relationship could be gauged by the distance between them as they drove down the street. Who knows how many budding romances have been nipped by the surge in popularity of bucket seats? I started out that first night of cruising crammed next to the door with my hand on the handle so that I could leap out if Joe Bob were transformed into a rape-strangler. But he didn't so much as shake my hand for weeks, first to my relief, and eventually to my distress. Gradually, I began scooting over slightly on the seat after he let me in and before he got back around to his side. In a month's time I had worked my way over almost to his side, under the guise of constantly tuning the radio.

And then it happened! We were at the city-wide Preaching Mission, being held in the cavernous gymnasium of the Civic Auditorium, which, on less sacred occasions, hosted roller derbies and wrestling matches. Joe Bob and I sat on bleachers along one wall with the rest of the student population. The adults sat in rows of folding chairs set up across the floor. It was a Friday night, the climax of the week-long mission. The speaker tonight was Brother Buck Basket from Birmingham, Alabama, come all the way to Hullsport just to spread the good news to his Tennessee brothers and sisters that Death had lost its sting. Joe Bob was all ears. Brother Buck was his idol. He had been a famous All-American guard from the University of Alabama a decade earlier. And then a Baltimore Colt, until he had run into a goal post and suffered a head injury, which had left him unconscious for days and then bound up in gauze for a month or more, with every football fan in the country in a frenzy of anxiety. Upon returning to the land of the living, however, Brother Buck had renounced his gridiron glory and dedicated his life to Christ.

His massive, dedicated frame dwarfed the podium. He wore a tan western-cut suit and a string tie and cowboy boots. I knew that soon Joe Bob would own a tan western suit and a string tie.

“Death! Where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory?”
Brother Buck thundered. The steel I beams that held up the roof seemed to tremble. He was holding up one fist in a gesture of defiance and was gazing intently at a spot near the rear ceiling. All of us automatically turned in that direction, expecting to see at least the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, if not the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.

“Ah know what you think,” he assured us quietly, returning his fist to the podium and his fervid blue gaze to the audience. “You think: It don't matter none
what
kind of a life ah live. Ah can read these here pornographic books, and look at nasty pictures, and defile my body with all manner of vile corruption. Ah can stay up all night drinkin', and ah can run around with fallen women and sleep through church on Sundays. It don't matter none. That's what you think, don't you, now? Admit it right here tonight to ole Brother Buck. You think, ah'd better just live it up today cause tomorrow ah may lie dyin' in a pool of black gore, with mah bones smashed and pokin' up through mah flesh; with mah guts trailin' out and tangled round mah twisted car; with mah brains dribbled acrost the highway like cornmeal mush…”

I glanced wearily at Joe Bob. I'd had enough of this from my Cassandran parents to last me a lifetime, which lifetime was apparently predestined to brevity and a bloody ending. But Joe Bob was grinning insanely and was mincing his Juicy Fruit, thrilled at this proximity to his hero.

“…and tomorrow that there bomb ah'm always hearin' about will go off and blow us sky high in little red pieces, like chaff before the whirlwind. Tomorrow mah plane flight will smash into the side of some mountain, and there'll be jagged bloody chunks of mah body strewn all acrost the forest floor for the wild animals to feast on. Tomorrow some madman with a telescopic sight will use mah eyes for target practice. So ah'd better live it up now while ah can. Ah'd best titillate mah flesh ever which way, cause this breath ah'm takin'” — he paused to take a deep illustrative breath — “may be mah last.

“Oh, Brother Buck
knows
how most of you folks live, friends.” The suspicion that this might be true, that Brother Buck really
did
know all about my feminine napkins and my padded bra, filled me with the same outraged sense of exposure I used to feel as a child at the line in ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town' that goes, ‘He sees you when you're sleeping./He knows if you're awake.'