Why Dogs Chase Cars (22 page)

Let me make sure that you understand the entire debutante process: in places like Birmingham, Atlanta, Charleston, and Richmond, eighteen-year-old female college freshmen who attended colleges like Hollins, Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Agnes Scott, and Randolph-Macon came back home to be presented to society in a way similar to that of royalty. These were the young daughters of tycoons and barons, people who vacationed in the Hamptons, Cape Cod, and the Riviera. In Forty-Five—and every tiny crossroads in South Carolina, at least—a girl with all of her teeth and the mental capacity to potentially complete a two-year technical
college with a degree in secretary science could pretty much undergo the debutante process, complete with gowns, elbow-length gloves, and cheap tiaras.

Compton called me up on a Wednesday night and said, “Hey, man, did you get an invitation to Libby Belcher's coming-out thing? Goddamn.”

I said, “I thought it was a joke. They must be worried no one will show up.”

Comp said, “Oh, we're going, amigo. You better find a way to get your daddy a babysitter for Mr. Coleman.”

I didn't tell him how Herbert Coleman had rounded the bend, so to speak. I said, “Do we have to get dressed up?” I didn't own a suit, seeing as my father wouldn't allow me to attend church services, and no one I knew had died yet.

Compton said, “It's going to be a spectacle, buddy. It'll be an event. You can wear my other suit. You can wear my other tie.”

I don't want to come across as a mystic, or the kind of person who can comprehend scenes long before they happen, but I could tell that Comp had something in mind that would embarrass not only the future debutantes, but their escorts, sponsors, and family members alike. These debutantes' boyfriends—who would all know only one woman in their lives—were the sons of cotton mill superintendents, or mill accountants, or lawyers whose only task was to defend the mill, or doctors who spent most of their time sewing fingers back on. Compton and I hated these smug, stupid
boys, for the most part, and only hoped that—as my father liked to say—“showing off good-looking poontang at a high-school reunion twenty-five years down the road is the best revenge.”

But between the ages of birth and seventeen we were helpless and hopeless, and we knew our place in Forty-Five society. I said, “You going to spike the punch?” to Compton over the telephone. So much for my vivid and overactive imagination.

“Idiot,” he said. “We won't have to do that. Armistead will spike the punch. Or Calhoun. Hell, I won't even drink that stuff. We'll be bringing our own flasks in, comrade.”

I didn't goad him to let me in on his plan. I sat in the den with the telephone to my head, daydreaming about Libby Belcher's mother and me making out in the middle of a sand trap, near a water hazard, while inside the clubhouse people danced to whatever bad music droned out from a portable record player.

I
PUT ON
Compton's other suit a week later and drove us to the Forty-Five Country Club an hour before dusk. Libby Belcher and I had been mortal enemies since the third grade, so I wondered why we got invited, and if it had anything to do with how we were the only boys at the predeb party without real dates. There were single girls there—last year's debutantes on summer vacation from Greenville Technical College, Central Northwest South Carolina Bible
College, Andersonville College, and a variety of schools of cosmetology. And there were the debutantes' younger sisters, all excited about their chance to undergo this same process in due time. Drunken fathers wearing plaid coats stood around with bourbon and Cokes, and mothers drank chilled red wine. Maybe it was my imagination, but when Compton and I walked in, it seemed like all conversation stopped and every person in attendance stared at us.

“Well, it's Mendal and Comp,” Libby said. She approached us as if she was wearing ball bearings on her spangly gold shoes. “I really didn't think y'all would come, but I'm glad you did.” She didn't shake our hands or offer us a shallow hug. She turned to her escort, Jimmy Wingard, and said, “Jimmy, would you go get Comp and Mendal some punch, s'il vous plaît?” Then she took us to a table covered with typed name tags. Compton's read
COMPTON
. Whoever made these pin-backed things mistyped my name. It came out
MENIAL
.

Either Earth, Wind, and Fire or the Commodores blared from the record player. This was my idea of Hades, of course. “Whatever you do, don't drink the punch, Menial,” Compton said out of the side of his mouth. “This is a little like Mexico—pretend that you're drinking it, but don't. These people are not our allies, and you know it. Don't be tricked. Never drink with the enemy.” It sounded like he'd rehearsed his little monologue; it sounded like something I'd heard a gangster say once in a 1940s movie that maybe had
played in Forty-Five a couple years earlier.

Jimmy Wingard was a halfback on the Forty-Five High Speed Fire Ant football team, and once ran a kickoff back almost ten yards. He didn't weigh more than 140 pounds and could've played offensive tackle—those lower-ranking mill boys weren't much bigger—had his father, the mayor, not threatened Coach Pinky Dabbs. Jimmy walked to us and said, “Drink up, boys. We gone have fun tonight.” He also tried to cheat off of my test papers in every class.

At this point I still didn't know about Compton's plan, though later on in life he told me he had had about a thousand ideas. He and I milled around the outskirts of the dance floor, pouring our punch into various potted fake palmetto trees. We reached into our respective coat breast pockets and pulled out rum we'd poured earlier, Compton into an old cough medicine bottle, and me into a Welch's grape jelly jar with a pop-top lid of sorts.

This party went on and on. People danced. Mr. Belcher made a toast between about every second song and progressively slurred his way through them. As the night went on—and as Jimmy Wingard, Bingham Bradham, Wingard McGaha, McGaha Scurry, Scurry Wimmer, and Wimmer Bingham brought us more and more punch—I began to realize that they had devised some kind of drink that only we supposedly would partake of, a purgative that should've sent us straight to the men's room off to the side of the sad pro shop.

Were they dipping cups into a punch bowl set off to the side, designated for us only? No. I watched closely. Had they dipped already spiked punch, then squirted a little Visine into our allotments? Yes. I said to Comp, “I know what they're doing. They're putting eyedrops in our drinks, hoping we'll get the squirts. I read all about this little trick one time. Some guy working at an airport bar flipped out and put Visine in everybody's Bloody Marys, then told them to have a pleasant flight.”

Compton said, “Uh-huh. Keep pretending to drink. They think we're just two poor boys who can't keep up. This couldn't've worked out any better if I'd found the right God and prayed, Menial.”

I said, “If you call me that again I'm going to kill you.”

How many goddamn songs had Earth, Wind, and Fire put out? I wanted to go back to my Jeep, back it straight into the clubhouse, and play a Frank Zappa, Blue Öyster Cult, Wishbone Ash, Allman Brothers, or Grateful Dead eight-track. I said, “Let's go. Let's blow this Popsicle stand. I want out of here. I'm out of rum, and the more people here see my name tag, the better the chances they'll call me Menial for the rest of my life.” The part about being out of rum wasn't true, because the rest of the quart of Captain Morgan was way beneath the passenger seat of the Jeep. “Come on, man. This is stupid.” I might've said I needed to go study for the SAT.

Compton looked at his watch. It wasn't eleven o'clock
yet. The dance floor thinned, and more and more people either took to love seats, chairs, and couches that lined the room, or plain left to skinny-dip in the over-chlorinated, aboveground pool. Libby Belcher came up and said, “Have y'all been drinking the punch?” She whispered, “We spiked it, you know. You don't feel it?” Her left breast hung out to show a crescent of nipple.

I said, “We're drinking, we're drinking. What did you spike it with, though? Nothing will affect me unless it's peach-bounce moonshine.”

Compton said, “Me and Menial were at a party last week down in Atlanta where the punch was spiked with LSD. Man, this ain't nothing.”

One of Libby Belcher's eyes went west, but she smiled like an everyday temptress. She leaned my way and said, “I kind of wish I was with you instead of Jimmy. Later on I'mo be sorry that I didn't marry a man who went to a real college, I know. And it don't matter to me that you've been with a black girl none.”

I didn't break. Libby had referred to Shirley Ebo. I looked down Libby's dress front and said, “Congratulations on your coming out.”

C
OMPTON HAD THOUGHT
to bring gloves with him to the pre-debutante party. And let me make it clear
that he was the one who put them on, that he was the one who shoved Jimmy Wingard's little thin pecker into one end of the Chinese handcuffs. “This was worth the goddamn ten dollars it took me to win these things playing ring toss at the fair last year,” Compton said.

We had pretended to go out on a golf-course walk with everybody else, then circled around. Wingard and Bingham Bradham had passed out side by side thirty minutes earlier on a love seat that looked like the one I'd sat on in Shirley Ebo's parents' house more than a few times. My job was only to gently get Bingham's right hand and stick one end of the Chinese handcuffs on his index finger. Compton unzipped Jimmy's pants, pulled out his sorry pecker, and attached the other end of the handcuffs halfway down. For those of you unfamiliar with the intricacies of Chinese handcuffs, these devices are made from a raffia-like material that, when pulled lengthwise, can only tighten. They're like eight inches of chitlins, and to release oneself from Chinese handcuffs—which are normally attached to one finger on one hand and one finger of the other hand—one must not become impatient and excitable and thus pull harder. It takes a cool, logical head, the ability to relax one's fingers, and to twist clockwise properly.

I got the end of the Chinese handcuffs that held Bingham's finger and slowly directed it onto Jimmy Wingard's lap. Compton got out Jimmy's thing, took the other end of the Chinese handcuffs, and slipped it on.

“This will end up the best thing that's ever happened in the history of Forty-Five, South Carolina,” Comp whispered. He got up and walked to the record player. He set the stylus on a particular song. “You need to stand guard by the door. Let me know when everyone comes back.”

I pulled my jelly jar out and supped from its contents. I didn't want my father knowing about all of this at first, but then realized how proud he'd be of my unsettling two privileged, safe boys' lives. Here we go:

Mr. and Mrs. Belcher led the group of parents and teenagers back to the clubhouse. They had their arms around each other, and any anthropologist would've noticed how nothing but Love and Hope and Peaceful Existence and Confidence shown on their faces. Near-debutantes and their escorts followed, then other debutantes' parents who would be throwing parties presently. Invited guests who would either be debutantes or escorts later on in life brought up the procession's rear. Although I didn't know what Compton would do in a matter of seconds, I knew that there was something wrong with this entire situation. That “Ignorance is bliss” cliché almost came to mind.

It didn't, but it almost did. Me, I thought, “Disabled workers of the world, unite,” because it was the last thing my father had said to me before he went off to blow smoke in Herbert Coleman's face.

I said, “Here they come, man.”

Comp nodded and smiled. He said, “I'm going to blast this music, and then you and I have to run out the back door
there. We'll come up from behind like we were out with everybody all along. And that's what we'll say.”

I said, “Okay.” Bingham Bradham still slept with his finger attached like an umbilical cord to Jimmy Wingard's little penis.

Compton pushed the On switch, and we took off. The singer screamed out, “
I was a lonely man,
” just as we made our way out of the clubhouse.

We ran. We took off. Compton and I skirted the exterior of the clubhouse like two field rats running from a flash-light's beam. We giggled like little debutantes ourselves. And when we entered the front of the Forty-Five Country Club clubhouse, Comp stood taller than he'd ever stood, for his trick had worked. We watched as Jimmy Wingard and Bingham Bradham danced the waltz of conjoined twins, hunched over, chaotic, and helpless.

Compton slid through the crowd to get a better view. Me, I stood back. Libby Belcher stared, knowing I had had something to do with it. When she came up and slapped my face, I could only say, “Hey. Teach you to call me Menial.” I said, “Shirley Ebo never hit me like that. And she's going to a real college year after next, too.”

Libby said, “You're behind all of this, ain't you?” She became the district superintendent of schools twenty years later, which I love to point out now. Libby put her fists on her evening gown and said, “Somehow you turned it all around so's they drank the enema.”

I shrugged. I looked at her daddy, who—and I'll give him
this, lawyer or not—laughed at the two boys' awkward dance on the linoleum. I said, “Man. You should learn how to control who you invite to parties. I'm a little unnerved.” Word for word—that's what I said. I wish I'd had a tape recorder to prove myself.

Dr. Scurry Bingham, who once told me I had gas when in actuality I had ripped a ligament in my side while lugging heart-pine lumber from point A to point B, said, “You boys just settle down. I'll call an ambulance.” He looked at the people surrounding him and said, “I got connections, I got connections.”