WHITE SUMMER Chapter 10

WHITE SUMMER
(Chapter 10)


"Jesus, Jase where have you been?! Do you know what happened?!" The first words out of Hunter’s mouth, it was the funniest joke. I never laughed.
"Warlock’s dead! He was hit by a car! Did you hear what I said?" He turned me to face him. " Jase, what the hell’s the matter with you?!"
I walked to my closet and slid the door open. "I know," I said . I stripped off my ruined shirt. My skin still held Ingrid’s scent. I pulled a black t-shirt over my head.
"The guys think he was high. They said you found him sitting in a shower in his clothes. That true?"
"Yes." I slipped off my slacks and shoved my feet through a pair of jeans.
"You don’t seem too choked-up."
I looked at him. "I was there. It’s over," I gathered my razor and my can of shaving cream. "He’s gone. There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing anyone can do."
"I just thought..."
"Excuse me, I need to shave," and left.
I set the can on the shelf above the row of sinks and turned on the hot water.
A guy one sink down from me shouted out,"What a dumb-ass, ran right into the street."
"Yeah," another voice from one of the stalls replied, " he must have been absent from kindergarten the day they talked about, ‘look both ways’."
The guy next to me laughed. "You got that right."
I spread the foam across my face. It was okay. He didn’t know what he was talking about. I pulled the razor across my cheek in sweeping arcs.
"He must have been high, is all I can figure," the guy in the stall said.
"Yeah! I heard that guy Seth down the hall deals. He rooms right next to him. I bet he got him good and fucked-up."
"I can believe that," the guy on the toilet responded.
I finished under my chin and splashed the rest of the shaving cream off.
"Man, that’s a load off my mind!" I heard the guy in the stall say. "Want to see?"
"Fuck you!" The guy next to me responded as I left.
I put my shaving stuff up and went to my desk and examined my books. I pulled my anthropology text off the shelf. It was heavy, but I would like to find something with even more weight to it, my art history book was larger, but it was paper bound and flexible. I looked over at my roommate’s desk and saw his Geography book. I went over and picked it up. Just what I was looking for.
"Hunter, could I borrow this?" I held it out.
"Sure, I don’t care," He looked up from his bed where he was reading."Go ahead."
"Thanks, I’ll bring it right back."
I walked down the hall. I stopped in front of the door and knocked. No response. He was always slow to answer. God, I hoped he was in. The door swung open. I cocked my left elbow and tucked the right one towards my hip. I reared back like Harmon Killebrew and slammed the book hard into Seth’s face. Blood geysered from his nose and he staggered back. I charged him, and pounded him again and again, solid in the face with the book.
He rolled, screaming on the floor, "What the fuck! Somebody, help! Get him off me!"
I felt bands of arms clamp around my throat and chest and wrench me off him. I was thrown back into the hall.
"What the hell is going on!" The Residence Assistant, a round-shouldered middle-aged grad student with glasses, loomed over me.
I stared up at him, my chest heaving, my nostrils flared like bellows as I tried to compose myself.
" There’ll be no brawls in my hall! I’m writing you both up. You both can explain it to the Dean of Students." He peered in at Seth. "For Christ’s sake, clean yourself up!" He started to stalk away, then halted, "I don’t know what this was all about, but stay away from each other, understand? The dean can sort it out."
I sat up and nodded my head in assent. Seth just dripped blood. He glared out at me with wild wounded eyes, a red blotched towel stuffed in front of his nose.
"Just so you know, that was for Warlock." I pushed myself up off the floor and retrieved Hunter’s book. Seth cringed and slammed his door.
I started back to our room, half-way down the hall, I saw Hunter. "God, you got blood all over you," he said when he came up to me.
I looked down and tugged at the front of my stained shirt . "Not mine," I answered. "I had a slight misunderstanding with someone, but it’s been settled. Here’s your book," I handed it over. "Thanks for the loan."
As we walked, he noticed the dark blotches on the cover. "What are these blood-stains!?"
"Sorry about that ."
" Forget it! See if I loan you anything else, though. You better get yourself together, buddy." He pushed ahead of me into our room.
"Oh, I’m together. Don’t worry about that." I changed shirts. My hands still shook from the confrontation with Seth. From my desk, I collected two wire-bound notebooks and pulled down my art history and literature texts, dug out a paperback of Henry Fielding’s, Joseph Andrews, and rifled through the pencils and pens jumbled in the top drawer. I stuffed a few into my hip pocket. "If anyone needs to know where I am, I’m at the library." I slipped my sandals on and headed down the stairwell. Outside, the fresh air helped clear my head. I wondered if my loafers were still over near Ballantine where I had thrown them.
The first thing I did when I got there was to check out the Indiana Daily Student in the Periodical Room for any information about a funeral. On the front of the paper was a large black and white photo of the open rear of an ambulance and a lot of out-of-focus heads in the foreground. The headline read, ‘Student Fatality Occurs on Third Street’, underneath, the article was rife with factual errors and typos. Still, it made me sad that the cool guy I knew as ‘Warlock’ would be lost forever, and only remembered in the archives as, Todd Warburton. The last line simply read, ‘funeral arrangements to be announced’. I re-folded the paper and placed it back on the rack.
On the second floor, I found an empty study carrel and spread my stuff out. I opened my art history book and highlighted names and dates and other fun facts, and did an outline for my paper. But I also thought about Warlock. And I thought about Ingrid. They shuffled through my mind like cards slapped one upon the other, each trying to trump; the image of Warlock’s vacant face, Ingrid in the shower, Warlock’s body lying broken at the curb, Ingrid wrapped in a bed sheet . I tried to read a chapter in the Fielding novel, but I paid the words as much heed as the rain I now heard pelting down outside.
I studied for another hour and wrote out a rough draft of my art history paper before I called it quits and ducked out to attend my two o’clock class. By that time the cloudburst had ended and everything smelled lush, the rich stew of earth and rain I’d always equated with earthworms squirming on sidewalks.
The classroom was a cement-walled bunker. Sturm droned on accompanied by a parade of slides flashed on a screen; religious frescoes and friezes, iconic bas-reliefs on church doors, heads framed by gilt haloes, like gold saucers tipped on end. My eyes took on the other-worldly glaze of the saints until the lights were flipped on.
After class I made a detour to Ballantine Hall. I had to find my shoes to prove to myself that yesterday really happened. The whole area was a mine field that bombed my brain with bursts of memory . The rims of my eyes burned as I scanned the surrounding ground. It must have been at least ten minutes, before I found one of my shoes. It lay heel up on the ivy-clotted embankment by the walk-way. The leather was still damp from the recent downpour. I held it in one hand like a compass, as I continued the search for the other shoe, but I soon gave up. Even one was too much . I made my way back to the dorm.
When I opened our door, a copy of the expulsion notice the R.A. had filled out and sent to the dean, lay on the floor. It was for physical assault against another student. I sagged and slapped it on my desk.
That evening, along with some other guys from our wing, Hunter and I ate dinner in the large dining hall. Our conversation covered nothing important, but that was good, our back and forth rang out just above the clatter of the silverware on the thick porcelain plates.
Afterward we went our separate ways, I lugged out my gray typewriter and heaved it onto my desk, rolled in a sheet of paper and started to hammer away. I propped my notebook beside it and glanced at the draft as I typed. It was slow going, but I was accurate.
Later Ingrid called. I was glad for the respite.
"How are you?" she asked.
"Fine."
"This is true?"
" I’m doing okay, I guess. I’ve got a lot to do. I was typing up one of my late papers when you called."
"I should hang up."
"No. No, I needed a break anyway. I want to talk with you. Say, I found one of my shoes."
"Just one?"
"Yeah, who knows what happened to the other one, maybe a squirrel took it."
On the other end I heard her laugh.
"I’ve got other shoes."
"Jason, do you think me bad?"
"Why?"
"Last night."
"No. Christ, no! If you hadn’t been there...If you hadn’t...Oh, Ingrid what can I say, you saved me in so many ways. I was pretty messed up." There was a long pause.
"Jason, in less than four weeks I will leave for home, for France. What do you think of this?" she asked.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like to think of endings. "I don’t like it. You know I don’t. How can I like it. But, there’s nothing to be done is there?
"Je suppose que non..."
What? What about you?"
"Sad. I will miss my friends...I will miss...I must hang up now."
"Ingrid, you know I..."
"No, you do not talk. You call me later, yes?"
"Yes." I paused. "I lov..."
"Non," and she hung up.
It was late when I finished my paper and I called her. She had to tell me how everything is so impossible over here. It was as if she had kept all her frustrations and complaints about America bottled up until now. She went on, how she missed Nice and her family, how she would be glad when her jet finally landed in France. The receiver felt dumb and heavy as lead in my hand. I understood what she was doing and just listened.
Next morning, over breakfast in the dining hall, I finally read it in the Daily Student. The viewing would be held at the Schlichter Funeral Home in Dwight, Illinois on Friday from 1-3 p.m., the service would be at 4, with internment immediately following at Prairie View Cemetery.
I phoned Verlaine when I got back to the room. She and Ingrid would pick me up some time in the morning on Friday. She’d let me know. I would need to pack a suit and a tie; to dress up again, that would certainly feel strange.
I asked Hunter if he was going to attend. He told me he would like to, but he had to go home for the weekend to see his girl friend. I wasn’t even going to bring up Joey.
I tried to carry on as normal in the next few days. The hearing with the Dean of Students weighed down on me. I would need to talk my way out of an expulsion, or at least explain my actions enough to receive a disciplinary probation, instead. Probations I could handle.
I paid Seth a visit. He had been to see a doctor. His nose would be classic, like some character out of Dick Tracy. I ‘explained’ our ‘situation’ to him. It was a misunderstanding between us, nothing to do with Warlock, nothing to do with drugs and how and where they could be obtained. He let it sink in. We agreed on a mutually satisfactory story.
When the day came, the silence that greeted us in the Dean of Students’ anteroom was oppressive. It was relieved only by the click-clack of the keys on the secretary’s typewriter, the ding and whirr as the carriage was snapped back. Outside, a branch heavy with deep red buds squealed back and forth against the leaded glass of the window. Seth sat beside me, slumped in a leather chair. I stared at the design on the carpet. It curled and entwined between my black wingtips, Hunter had relented and let me borrow a pair of his shoes. They were a little roomy.
I looked over at Seth. "How’s the nose?" It was crisscrossed with tape that held a metal band to the bridge.
"Boke! ‘Ow do you tink!" He was less intelligible since my handiwork.
"Go with me on this and we’ll both get off with probation. You don’t want me to say all I know."
"Ba’tard!"
"Do you hear me?" I asked in a serious whisper.
"I ‘ear you." Seth deflated.
We were summoned in individually to give our versions of ‘the truth’ to the dean. As soon as I sat down, I felt as if I was in a hollow dream, the words came in a rush. I had found out Seth, behind my back, was seeing a girl I had been dating, and no I’d rather not give out her name. We started wrestling around throwing punches and I lost my head and picked up a book from the floor and started pounding him with it and he turned suddenly and I accidently hit him in the face. I was heartily sorry for my actions and I had since broken up with the girl and Seth and I were still friends and I wouldn’t do something like that again. It’s just not in my nature to hurt anyone.
If the dean had doubts about our story he never revealed them. Seth must have stuck by my scenario because we each received disciplinary probation and were told not to have any further contact with each other for the rest of the semester. The dean noted I was already on Academic Probation and encouraged me to get serious about my educational opportunities. I assured him I was.
On the way out of his office I nodded to the secretary and opened the door for Seth.
In the narrow hall, I grabbed him by the shoulder. "Don’t get in my way. Don’t let me see you," I said, and shoved around him.
Friday found me standing with a gold vinyl suit bag thrown over my shoulder, in front of McNutt at 7 A.M., the time Verlaine set for our departure.
The yellow bug swerved into the circle drive and stopped in front of me with a beep. Verlaine hopped out, her hair hanging loose to her shoulders. She was dressed in a t-shirt and cut-off jeans, the white threads twisted into a fringe around her thighs.
"I dig your hair."
"Thanks, braids don’t make it at a funeral, right?"
Ingrid opened the passenger side and swung her legs out. The door between us, she leaned over to give me a hug. "Jason."
I hugged her to me, her soft flesh, and the memories of that night swirled to the surface.
Verlaine, raised the scalloped hatch . "Hand your bag over, if you’re not too busy."
"Don’t fold it up! It’s my good suit."
"Just hand it over. I’ll take care of it." She stuffed it in like packing around the suitcases already in the trunk.
"What are we doing staying overnight?"
"In your dreams!" Verlaine, retorted.
"Il dort avec moi,"Ingrid laughed. "Our dresses. We will stop and change before we arrive."
"It is a funeral, Jase."
"I know that! You wouldn’t go in cut-offs. I just..."
"You have shoes?"
"They’re in there."
"Okay, then get in." She slammed the hatch.
I sprung the seat forward and slipped into the back.. Ingrid sat in front of me. Verlaine adjusted the rear view mirror and wiggled her fingers at my reflection, popped the clutch and we were off.
It wasn’t until several stop lights later that the motor noise finally made me speak up. "Is it always this loud!"
"I don’t know," Verlaine shouted, "I never sit back there! It’ll get better once we’re out on the highway!"
The seat vibration gave me an unwelcome erection. I remembered Warlock riding that washing machine and had to let a smile break across my face. I still couldn’t believe. I tried to figure out what to do with my legs, fold them up in front of me or stretch them off to the side. There were no comfortable answers. I noticed the foil wrapped block on the seat next to me. I held it up. "Hey, Verlaine, what’s this!"
"Brownies! Have one!"
I peeled back the foil and tore one of the squares from the larger brick. It was delicious, moist and chewy. "These are great!"
"I thought you’d like them! Pass one up to me!"
"Me, too, Jason," Ingrid called.
I tore them each off a piece.
"You like my special recipe?" Verlaine asked.
"Yeah, they’re really good. Did you put black walnuts in them? They have an interesting taste."
She glanced at Ingrid. "They do don’t they?" She laughed. "They’re hash brownies, Jase."
Ingrid turned to look at me and laughed also, and took a bite of hers.
"Just eat one for now," Verlaine, continued. "They won’t kick in for another hour."
"You’re amazing!" Warlock, where ever he was, was probably smiling, saying, ‘finest kind’!
Houses and narrow streets, railroad tracks, started to give way to stands of trees and open fields, neat little farms with white box-like barns. Dandelions gone to seed sugared the bushy new grass. In one yard a woman was already out, pinning clothes to her laundry line. We passed a creek , its calm surface the color of the green army men I once played with. Ingrid lit a Gitane.
"Give me a break, would you!?"
"I roll down the window!" she called.
The wind snapped my hair and slapped my face. I scooted toward the center of the seat. As we sped along the pot-holed asphalt, furrowed fields spun past like spokes, white petals snowed from pretzel-limbed Dogwoods, and trees further back filigreed in yellow-green and lavender, flashed with the sun. I decided to count the telephone poles.
"So you talked the dean out of expelling you,"Verlaine glanced back.
"Something like that. Eleven, twelve.."
"Why didn’t you get Seth kicked out."
"If I had ratted on him, thirteen, he would’ve taken down a lot of good guys. Fourteen. I didn’t want to have that on my head . Fifteen."
"Did you break his nose?"
"Seventeen. Oh, yeah. It’s like a potato."
Verlaine laughed. "Great! Would you stop counting!"
"Oui. Il est tres ennuyeux!"
"I know something else that is ‘tres’ what-you-said." I sat back sullenly in my seat.
The highway unrolled before us. I casually noted Cataract Falls Rd. on a sign and slipped into an impromptu rhyme, "Cataract Falls, Cataract Falls, I slipped on a rock in my overalls," I sang in a low wobbly voice.
Verlaine laughed and continued. "I swam so fast, I didn’t think I’d last."
Ingrid picked it up, "I could not keep up, so I had to jump." She turned in her seat to see what I’d sing in response.
"I went down, down, down, and I thought I’d drown."
Verlaine was silent for a few seconds then beat on the steering wheel in a eureka moment, "But I got my wish, and I hitched a ride on a big fat fish!"
We broke into laughter and the miles peeled away.
Cloverdale was a tidy little town snuggled against I-70. It had plenty of churches and a huge golf course on it’s north side.
"‘went to the country club and golf course,’" I sang in my best imitation Dylan twang, "‘shot a few holes, blew their minds...’"
"Do you want me to turn on the radio, Jase?" Verlaine shouted back.
"No, I’m finished ."
"Stardust Road," Ingrid said. She pointed to the street sign. " ‘Stardust’, it was composed at the university. "
"Yeah, I know who you’re talking about," I clamped my hands on the back of her seat, "The Book Nook, right? Oh, who was that guy?"
"Hoagy Carmichael," Ingrid answered.
I sat back down in my seat, "I don’t think I’ve ever heard the song."
Ingrid hummed a few bars.
"Wow, I’m impressed," I said.
Ingrid turned and gave me the finger.
"What was that for?!"
" Philistine! You are American and know no jazz! Charlie Parker! Jelly Roll Morton!"
"Well, shoot me! I grew up on top forty."
Ingrid sat back, composed in her seat. "Bang. Bang," she said.
The little yellow beetle bounced across train crossings like a salmon leaping upstream to spawn. In the backseat, I felt like a chicken leg in a ‘Shake n’ Bake’ bag.
Indiana spread out beside us in an unremarkable sameness of, fenced fields, sporadic trees, skeins of power lines, solitary churches with wide parking lots, square homes in cluttered yards.
We passed a quarry, scraped out of the earth like a pale scab, it’s center punched in and filled with water green as caterpillar guts.
Further along, before we crossed U.S.- 40, a huge high school sprawled. It had a football field and two baseball diamonds, a gymnasium shaped like a loaf of bread, and a set of tennis courts. I wondered if books or basketballs were the major area of study.
We talked school. We talked travel. We talked music. We talked politics. Our conversations seemed to jump from subject to subject with the changes in the landscape, then just as quickly dissipated into the noise of the road.
Soon, stop-lights appeared, to greet us on the outskirts of Greencastle. We continued chastened. In the center of the town sat a square gray court house. It was a cross between a bank and a library. There was a piece of WWII hardware sitting on one corner that looked like a bomb with wings.
"This makes me so mad," Ingrid said. "You Americans always talk, peace, peace, peace, everything peace, but you always honor war, monuments, sculptures, to war. You put tanks on your courthouse lawns and cannons in your cemeteries." She pulled hard on her cigarette and expelled the smoke out the window.
"Hey, you’ll get no argument out of me. It’s crazy I know. Downtown Indianapolis’s center of attraction is the War Memorial."
"People get bored with peace,"Verlaine added, "then they start noticing what their government is doing to them. The government doesn’t like all the scrutiny, so to keep the masses preoccupied, it starts wars, Indians, Nazis, Viet Cong, whatever bogeyman is handy at the time."
"Professor Wolfenberger teaches here. Should we stop in and see him?" I asked.
"Can’t, Jase, we’ve got miles to go... have you forgotten?"
"No, of course not," I answered. Then I thought about things, "Wow, their room is totally empty."
"What? Whose? What are you talking about?" Verlaine asked.
"Warlock and Wolfman, they’re both gone. Their room is empty."
"Yeah." Verlaine drove on, the car stuffed with silence. As if on cue, Verlaine began to snuffle, tears began to slide down Ingrid’s cheeks. We passed around the Kleenex and blew our noses. It was like a deep sad wave that swept over us, then just as quickly subsided, as we left Greencastle behind.
Near Crawfordsville I felt the hash brownies kick in.
"Too fast," I muttered.
"We’re cruising, Jase," Verlaine laughed as cars zipped around us like giant bees.
Ingrid kept brushing her hair.
The sign for Roachdale caused Verlaine to grip the wheel and bounce the V. W. off and on the road.
"R-R-Roach-dale," I sputtered.
Ingrid giggled."Doobieville must be ahead, a’ droit, Jason?"
"Wha-what about Potstown?" I coughed out, and both girls laughed.
"Good one," Verlaine’s laugh was all ready a sagging balloon. She turned on the radio with a noisy pop and rolled the knob between her fingers, the tuning bar slid along its merry path, back and forth, as she played with it, snatches of melody and talk mashed into a hash of static. "I need some music," The dial indicator wiggled slightly as it rescued Tommy James and the Shondells from the noise. ‘Hanky Panky’ pounded, distorted, out of the fifty-cent black paper speaker. ‘My baby does the hanky panky, my baby does the...’ She swerved to a stop on the road shoulder. We spilled out of the V.W. as if it were an overturned carton of milk, fruging and gyrating by the side of the road, as we laughed insanities. Ingrid embraced me, her eyes like sparklers, as she mouthed, ‘My baby does the hanky panky, yeah...’, and stabbed me with a kiss.
"Give me some, people," Verlaine bumped her hips into ours.
‘I saw her walkin’ on down the line, ye-a-a-h...’
We spun around, our backs pressed against each other’s, as our arms jerked furiously up and down before we toppled over on the grass berm, laughing, and still we sang, ‘Yeah, my baby does the hanky panky...’
The sky was fantastically blue, the clouds white as egg shells, the grass cool and caressing. I stretched and touched Ingrid’s hand. Verlaine’s hand touched mine. We were the cock-eyed crown that rested atop earth’s green head as the planet revolved beneath us. I sucked in a breath and the wind changed direction.
"That was Tommy James and the Shondells," a voice crackled, "to kick-off a Million Dollar Weekend..." Verlaine was on her knees. "Enough! Too much! We need to lay miles. Up! Get up!" She found her feet as the Hollies’ ‘King Midas in Reverse’ came on with its strumming guitar intro.
" Verlaine..."
I must have looked out-of-it, because she said,"You okay, you going to be sick?"
"No. I’m okay. It’s just the song."
"What?" She sat down beside me, next to Ingrid.
What were the chances? This song, at this moment? It was too much of a coincidence. Warlock was talking to me through this song. I told them; "On the last... ‘If you could only see me’ ...on the last day... ‘I know exactly where I am’...Warlock was alive... ‘You wouldn’t want to be me’... he said he was like this song... ‘I’m not the guy to run with, ‘cause I’ll throw you off the line...’ I didn’t realize what he meant... ‘It’s plain to see it’s hopeless’...and now it’s playing, here, now... ‘He’s King Midas with a curse, He’s King Midas in reverse’... this, it’s too spooky."
We sat and listened, let it play out, ‘I wish someone would find me, and help me gain control, Before I lose my reason, And my soul...He’s King Midas...’ As the song faded away, we sat silent.
"He’s here, Jase," Verlaine whispered. "Can you feel him? A beautiful warmth."
A choir of female voices chimed from the radio, "It’s a doub-ble he-e-a-d-er."
Then, how many bars did John Sebastian strum on the auto-harp before it hit me full force? That final night with Karen, our song playing...
‘Do you believe in magic in a young girl’s heart,...’
Verlaine and Ingrid sat for a moment longer and listened, then Ingrid pulled me up. She held me as she swayed to the music. ‘I’ll tell you ‘bout the magic and it’ll free your soul...’ Now I truly felt Warlock’s presence, and there was someone else...Karen. Too soon, it ended on that rhythmic chant, that mantra, ‘Do you believe, like I believe, do you believe, like I believe in Magic.’ A commercial came on and broke the spell. My eyes spilled over.
"Jason, I know she is okay." She looked at me. " Everything it is okay. He is okay, too. And you are okay, Jason. Believe me." She hugged me tighter.
The wind shifted slightly and from across the rows of last year’s corn stalks, I heard the call of a cardinal in some nearby tree. I imagined it blood red and solitary.
We walked back to the car and sat a little while longer before Verlaine finally turned the key in the ignition and we drove into Crawfordsville. I didn’t really notice the town. It was buildings and streets and trees, stop signs, and traffic lights, red and yellow and green.
Then like a slalom, the curved entrance ramp to I-74, slung us onto the interstate. It was a straight shot into Illinois. The traffic flowed around us in shiny intense colors, as the bright sun dazzled off the chrome bumpers. Semi-trailer trucks surged around us and shove our little yellow car to the side.
As we got closer to Bloomington, Illinois and U.S. 55, the last leg of our trip, Verlaine sighed, "God, I can’t handle funerals. Pass me up a brownie."
I peeled back the foil and passed her a moist chunk .
"Me, also, Jason." Ingrid’s brown eyes shone golden in the reflected light.
I remembered well the last funeral I had attended and pulled off a square for myself.
Interstate 55 was a narrow two-lane, tar had been spilled across a mosaic of cracks. The road surface was uneven. Paralleling us, clanked a long freight train like a rusty zipper that pulled the sky to the earth, as it traveled across the flat open prairie.
Verlaine would pass slow four-door sedans and station-wagons with thrill-ride abandon.
Each time I would feel the strain of the hard-pressed engine run right up my spine.
We exited 55 at Chenoa, Illinois. Verlaine wanted to drive Route 66 the rest of the way.
I asked. "Why? It’s got to be worse than 55."
"Maybe, but they made a T.V. series about it. Ever watch ‘Route 66'?"
"Not really."
"Route 66 was the first highway or something." She started talk/singing, "It winds from Chicago to L.A. more than...I forget. Anyway, they made this cool show about it and it starred George Maharis and I had this huge crush on him, so we’re taking it."
"Fine." ‘Finest kind’ I thought again and curled my legs into a lotus position on the seat. We’d be in Dwight soon.
If 66 was famous then, it was a forgotten highway now, we passed a Sinclair Station that seemed to still be in operation, but grass peeked through the cracks in the concrete.
I looked over at Ingrid as she and Verlaine chatted away in front of me. My eyes fixed on the subtle transition from her slender neck to the soft line of her jaw. If I sketched her now I would use pastels; Tuscan Rouge, Pale Vermillion, Yellow Ochre, Peach Beige. I would blend the colors and blow the dust from the paper. With each mile I knew our time together was growing shorter.
We stopped in Odell, just a short way from Dwight, at a little gas station, to change. We adjourned to opposite sides of the white-washed building with the keys to the restrooms dangling from small planks of wood.
I unzipped my bag and had my dress pants and shirt on before I discovered I hadn’t packed my shoes, or my tie, or even my belt. I was such a dumb ass. Now what was I going to do? I knew exactly where they were. I could even picture them on the floor beside my bed back at the dorm. I had socks, if that was any consolation. I slipped my suit coat on and wiped some water across my hair and slunk out, ditching my bag in the trunk, to wait on the girls. As I stood in front of the station, I decided to get a pop and plunged my arm into a galvanized chest of ice water, fishing for a Nehi. I paid the attendant and snapped off the cap. It was cold and sweet, fruity and fizzy, just what I needed. I decided to ask the guy if there were any clothing stores around here, even though I was low on money.
"Nope. Farm supply store on Prairie Street," was his clipped answer, "But they’d just have work boots, suspenders and the like. No fancy duds like you’re lookin’ for."
I returned to the yellow bug and leaned on the curved fender, my head on my chest, my hands thrust in my pockets, my ankles crossed.
The metallic creak of the restroom door snapped my head up. I had never seen Ingrid in a black dress before. She looked somber and beautiful. Her dark hair framed her face and swooped down across one eye. I wanted to hold her and never let her go.
Verlaine, right behind her, wore a skirt and blouse of deep indigo, her hair graced her shoulders. "Where’s your tie?" She asked, "Don’t tell me you need help tying it."
"I forgot it." I stretched my feet out. "And my shoes."
"I asked you! Didn’t I ask him, Ingrid?" Verlaine stalked over to me. " ‘Jase, do you have your shoes?’ You said yes!"
Ingrid had a difficult time containing her laughter.
I fell off the fender as Verlaine slammed the two suitcases in.
"You’ll just have to deal with it, Jase! No belt either?" Her eyes bore into me like my mom’s. "I think you smoke too much dope!"
"I didn’t make the hash brownies!"
"Jase, the joke’s on you! There’s no hash in those brownies! I threw in a little nutmeg and allspice to mess with you! I wanted to see your reaction."
"Well, son of a...."
Ingrid yanked me away, " Push in your collar," she fixed it, "and the top button of your coat," She pressed it in. "You have on dark socks, maybe no one will notice you do not wear shoes."
"Get in the car," Verlaine said.
Dwight was a neat little town, ranch houses with wide lawns, tree-lined streets, a quiet park. We ate at ‘The Coachman’ restaurant. NO SHIRT! NO SHOES! NO SERVICE! We laughed. I wondered what their policy was on socks. We sat in a booth and ordered; BLT for me, soup and salads for the girls.
"You ever meet his folks?" Verlaine asked.
"No. But he never had anything good to say about his father. He hated him," I took a bite of my sandwich. "In fact he didn’t much care for anyone else in his family, either, except his sister, Cheryl."
"I wonder what the deal was?"
"I think he felt they thought of him as a big nuisance."
"That’s too bad," Verlaine folded a piece of lettuce around her fork, " I bet they have regrets now."
I asked Ingrid, "How’s the soup?" I didn’t want to think about Warlock.
"Not enough vegetables, too salty, the broth is thin."
"I don’t think you’ve had a decent meal over here yet," I smiled.
Under the table I felt her foot push against my knee. She looked down, trying hard not to spill her soup.
We had finished. It was time to go. We needed to do what we had come here for. We had no trouble finding the Schlicter Funeral Home on Mazon Avenue. It was a white-trimmed brick building with tall round pillars at the entrance and hedges shorn to extremes. There was a white, late model, Cadillac hearse parked at the side. Several men stood in front of it smoking as we pulled into a space. The lot was about a third full.
As we walked over, I stepped on a rock and tried not to flinch. My palms went damp and I found it difficult to breathe. The back of my hand brushed against Ingrid’s. I wanted her fingers to respond, to connect with me. I needed her to hold my hand. She must have sensed this, for I felt her fingers squeeze mine together when we entered through the white double doors.
Inside we stood together as if joined at the hip. Strangers milled around, talking low in groups. There was a stand with an open book and a quill pen, with a long white ruffled feather. In front of us, beyond the rows of chairs I saw the casket, pearly white. The top section was open, a white satin coverlet was folded down to reveal the profile of someone I once knew. A white solid-body electric guitar stood upright nearby. I pressed my lips together and turned away and followed the girls to the guest book.
We each in turn took hold of the flouncy feathery pen to sign our names, the plume waved and jiggled with every letter. I laughed to myself, my diaphragm bucking. How ridiculous it looked. Warlock would be pissed as hell that they had put out a stupid-ass pen like this at his funeral.
I replaced the pen then saw a face across the room framed in the crowd . It was Warlock. But of course, not Warlock, it was a girl. She possessed his dark eyes and roundness of face, but softer. Her hair was black as his, but long and swept up on top of her head. She had a shy smile that over took her face as she saw me and came toward us.
"Hello," she said, "Your name wouldn’t be Jase, by any chance?"
"Yeah, that’s me."
"I knew it had to be you. I’m Cheryl, Todd’s sister." She gave me a quick hug. "Todd told me so much about you." She wiped at her eyes. "Excuse me...I..."
"This is Verlaine," I motioned her forward. "And this is Ingrid." She moved to my side. "We came to pay our respects. Warlock was a great...I mean your brother, Todd, was a great guy."
"Warlock?" She looked quizzically.
"It was just a nickname around the dorm."
"Oh, okay. Yes. Thanks. I’m sorry, I’m still not over the suddenness of everything. We were really close. I’m just so glad you’re here. Would you like to go up to see him?"
I nodded. I took hold of Ingrid’s hand, Verlaine took hold of mine, as we approached the casket.
It wasn’t Warlock, not really. They had cut his hair. His head rested too neatly on the satin pillow, his lips pressed together were pink, his mouth too small, the eyelids shut too tight. They had dressed him all in white, a white satin tie, a white suit coat. He wouldn’t be caught de...I damned my thoughts. It was so ridiculous I wanted to laugh. It was so insanely sad I wanted to cry. I did neither, but stood there hypnotized in his stillness. Verlaine reached out and touched the cuff of his sleeve, as if she wanted to straighten it. I felt her hand pat my back, then urge me on. Ingrid made the sign of the cross and murmured to herself.
As we walked away, Verlaine leaned close to my ear. "I slipped a joint up his sleeve."
"Finest kind," I whispered back.
Ingrid took my hand again as we sat down.
Debbie sat a row over from us. She didn’t look good. You could tell she had done a lot of crying.
Cheryl came over. She wanted to introduce us to her family.
It went fine up to a point. Her father wouldn’t shake my hand. He stared at me with a mixture of hurt and accusation in his eyes. "The way you’re dressed," He must have noticed my lack of a tie and shoes. "is this some kind of sick joke? Don’t you young people have respect for anything? I just want to know," he continued. "Were you the one who sold L.S.D. to my son?"
"Dad!" Cheryl hissed.
"No! I would never..." I tried to say.
" Then who did? If you were his friend, why didn’t you try to stop him, or did you follow your credo, ‘do your own thing’?" All I saw were his moving lips. "You’re not wanted here."
"Dad, stop it!"
Ingrid hooked her arm around me and hurried me outside. I leaned against the mortuary’s brick facade and shook, bent at the waist, taking in deep gouts of air. So many things crowded my mind. I was upset with how Warlock looked in his casket. Did they even know their own son, did his dad? He didn’t know me. I cursed my forgetfulness, with something as important as this.
"He’s just like Warlock told you he was, an asshole," Verlaine said. "Just let it go. We’re here. We need to do this for Warlock. Cheryl seems cool. Let’s go back in and sit in the back row. He needs us here."
I straightened up. " I wish I wasn’t here. I wish none of this had ever happened."
Ingrid placed her hands on my shoulders. "It did and you are! We will go through with this. Come." She took my hand and we walked back in. They had closed the casket and the minister stood at the pulpit. I so wanted Warlock to sit up and take that beautiful guitar and play again those sweet runs I had once heard. Cheryl turned around and looked at us, then turned back and bowed her head as the minster commenced.
"We are gathered here today to honor and remember, Todd Alan Warburton, a beloved son, a cherished brother, an admired friend, and a gifted musician, who now in the grace of the Lord our God..." The eulogy went on for I don’t know how long, but I didn’t hear one word that related to the friend I knew, except the, ‘gifted musician’ part, that came at the very beginning. I guess the whole thing was designed to comfort his parents, not to honor a sweet and crazy guy.
I felt embarrassed as I sat there in my socks. Warlock would have loved it and laughed, even at his own funeral.
After the prayers and scattered sobs, his casket was lifted up and carried out the side entrance to the waiting hearse. I thought they’d take the guitar as well, but it was left.
"Funerals make me feel so lonely," I said as we walked back to the Volkswagen.
"Lonely or lonesome?" Verlaine, replied without thinking.
"Both."
"Follow the red car," Ingrid pointed to the vehicle that pulled out in front of us.
They put a black flag on our antenna as we pulled under the portico and we followed the line of cars out of the lot.
The procession rolled slowly along, winding it’s way to the Prairie View Cemetery on the outskirts of Dwight. The graveyard was bordered by a low brick wall mounted with iron fencing. Trees still in their spring colors over hung the narrow cemetery lane, the neat rows of polished stone, red granite and gray marble set into the ground row upon row. The sun made the surrounding grass gleam, robins seemed to be hopping everywhere.
We were among the last of the cars to park as Verlaine angled the bug off the road. Groups of mourners made their way to the grave. A large canvas tent was set up to shade the site and a row of chairs for the family. The casket had all ready been placed on railings over the fresh excavation. It’s pearl sheen took on a gray cast in the flapping shadow of the canopy.
Cheryl was sitting with her family.
I saw Debbie opposite us and nodded, but she didn’t acknowledge me. She had a handkerchief worried into a tight ball in front of her swollen eyes.
The minister stepped forward. "I will now read from Psalm 23. Please bow your heads."
I bowed my head .
"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures..."
I heard sobbing and snuffling, noses discreetly being blown. The mating songs of the spring birds filled the air. I stole a look. Beyond the people gathered at the grave was another figure standing by a tree some distance away. It was a tall man in a trench coat. I wondered who he was, what he was doing there. He looked my way. I strained my eyes, to try to bring him more into focus. He noticed me. And then the incredible thing. He raised his hand in a peace sign. He crossed himself and lowered his head and raised his arm again, but this time with his fist clenched in a power salute. I knew. It was Wolfman. His hair had been cut short. But it was Wolfman. Yes. I looked over at Verlaine, her head bowed, and gave her a nudge. She didn’t look up but gave me an aggravated elbow back. I looked again. And there was just the tree. The figure was gone. I wanted to call out. I wanted to run over there, but I couldn’t. I didn’t dare.
"...And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen."
All the heads raised and Verlaine gave me a hard look. But there was no one to see. Wolfman was gone again.
The minister addressed the family, "Lord, Todd Alan Warburton has departed this earthly dwelling, and left behind those who mourn his absence..."
I heard sobs shudder from Verlaine. Ingrid was stoic.
"Grant that we may hold his memory dear, be never bitter for what we have lost..."
I looked over at his dad, his face flushed, his fingers hinged tight to his folded hands.
Cheryl broke down in racking sobs. Her mother reached out to comfort her.
After the ‘amens’, the mourner’s silence lifted and their murmured condolences rattled through the air like bees.
"Verlaine!"
"Later, Jase. Okay?"
"No! Not okay," I grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. I whispered.
"Wolfman! I saw him!"
"What? What are you saying!? Here!? Wolfman? Where?" She swivelled her head.
"Over there by that tree," I pointed, "during the Psalm. I looked up and there he was."
"Are you sure?"
"He flashed me the peace sign."
"Where do you think he disappeared to?"
"No clue. But I’d swear it was him. His hair was short."
"Well, that makes sense."
Cheryl stepped away from her family and walked over to us. "Thank you so much for coming. It meant a lot to me. You don’t have to run, do you? I’d like to hang out with Todd’s friends for a little while, if that would be okay."
"Sure, fine with me. What say you Jase, okay with you?" Verlaine asked. "Ingrid, Any pressing appointments?"
"Non."
"Great, sure, let’s hang out," I said.
"I have to stay with the folks," she nodded to them, " until everyone leaves. But after that I’m free. You can bring me home, right?" She turned to Verlaine.
"Sure, we can do that. We’d be glad to," Verlaine looked over at Mrs. Warburton. "We won’t keep your daughter long, I promise."
"Arlene, are you going to let her do this?" It was Mr. Warburton .
"Henry, she’ll be fine. They’re his friends. She needs this, to talk with them. We can discuss this later if you want, but not now, not here." She scooped his arm in hers.
We stood by and watched as the last of the mourners shook hands and offered hugs and filed to their cars. Cheryl finally was able to take leave of her family and joined us.
Verlaine wanted to change clothes, Ingrid as well, so we walked back to the V.W.
The girls pulled out the suitcases and got the clothes they needed.
"Jason, unhook the clasp of my dress, s’il te plait."
She swept up her hair, exposing the tender nape of her neck.. I slipped the small hook from the eyelet.
"Merci."
I tugged at the small black zipper.
"Non! This I can do. You go." Ingrid, clothes in hand, slammed the door and disappeared behind the front seat.
I saw her head bob-up once, her shoulders bare, then she dived down again and the compact car shook briefly before she emerged in jeans and a knit shirt.
Verlaine was next as she hopped into the cramped quarters and ducked out of sight. A bare foot popped-up at a window and was poked through a leg of the cut-offs, then the other foot wiggled through. Her two arms raised and shimmied a top over her head, as she smiled. She emerged a moment later. "That feels better. Who’s next?" She folded her dress and placed it in her suitcase. "Jase? Your chamber awaits," she said, opening the door.
I removed my jacket and unbuttoned my shirt and rustled around at the bottom of my bag for my clothes. I threw them in the back seat and closed the door behind me. I had my shirt off and my pants down around my knees when something hit the side of the car. I jerked around to see Verlaine’s face pressed distorted to the window."I can see your ass!" She called.
I heard a rapping from behind me.
"Vous avez un joli cul." Ingrid ogled me from the rear window.
"Shit! Knock it off!"
The V.W. bounced up as they scattered.
I felt like a shackled Houdini as I jerked my jeans on in the cramped space of the back seat. I fell out of the car, as I struggled into my t-shirt.
"Haven’t you ever heard of a thing called privacy? I didn’t do that when you were changing!"
"Come off it," said Verlaine, "you know you loved it!"
"Shit, you two..." I looked at Cheryl standing there laughing. "Sorry for the language."
Cheryl smiled. "You don’t think I cuss? You wouldn’t believe the fights my brother and I had."
"I think I can," I answered. "He had a vocabulary that could be used as a paint thinner. Let’s walk and I can fill you in."
"Why did you call Todd, ‘Warlock’?" She asked.
"What? Oh, back at the... That’s just who he was, he called himself that right from the start. He and Wolfman, that’s just who they were."
Verlaine put her arm across Cheryl’s shoulders as we walked together on the grass, where the road looped around the tall Sycamore, amid the stone slabs that dimpled the soft green earth, the spot where I had seen Wolfman.
"Are you sure it was here, Jase?" Verlaine asked.
"Positive."
"This is quite a distance. How can you be sure it was Wolf ?"
"I told you. He saw me. He flashed me the peace sign. You a know guy."
"Okay, this ‘wolfman’, he was Todd’s roommate, right?" Cheryl interrupted, "What’s the big deal about him?"
I started to tell her but she stopped me, "I don’t mean to be rude, Jase, but I can’t stand these for a minute longer, please excuse me." She disappeared around the side of the tree, and a few moments later returned barefoot, her stockings wadded up and stuffed in one of the shoes she was carrying. "I hate pantyhose! Don’t you love the way the grass scrunches between your toes?"
Verlaine grinned and nodded as we continued our walk and I told Cheryl about Wolfman.
When we came to an open expanse, Cheryl flopped down on the grass.
Verlaine did likewise and Ingrid pulled me down next to her. We all laid with our backs pressed to the ground, our legs out spread, like a string of paper dolls in a granite park.
"I do this," Cheryl said. " when...things get me down. I just lie on the ground and wish my troubles into the clouds and let them float away. Do you ever listen to the world breathe around you?" She paused and listened. "Hear that Blue-jay?"
"Thief, thief," Verlaine imitated.
"No. No, it’s the sound the trigger on my squirt gun would make every time I squirted Todd, when we were kids. I’d squeeze that little green plastic trigger... ‘dee-dee’," she sounded, recoiling her index finger.
Ingrid’s finger tips were like moist little sponges. I felt her energy, fine as hairs, flow up my fingers. My hand coiled around hers.
"Cheryl, touch my hand."
"Wow, I can feel the ridges on your finger tips, what are they called, in science? Yes...whorls. They’re like the heating coils on a stove."
Her fingers wiggled through mine like minnows and curled lightly over the back of my hand. "Now touch Verlaine," I said.
"I can feel it," Verlaine said immediately. "Our atoms streaming, colliding. We’re like water."
"Me, too," Cheryl said. "Oh, wow, this is too much."
The breeze picked up and the sky became increasingly covered with clouds, panes of intermittent sun slid across the cemetery and blanketed us, at intervals, in warm light, each wave a revelation.
Cheryl’s eyes were fixed on a formation above, that she pointed out to us and said looked like a prancing pony, until it’s tail separated and transformed into a cowboy hat."Everything changes doesn’t it? I mean clouds are always changing, but like, they’re water vapor, right? And they will always be water vapor. Even when there is not enough to form a cloud, it is still there, right? So it changes, but it doesn’t, not really, I mean, at its heart, right?"
"Yeah," I answered. "I guess I never thought of things in exactly that way."
"And we’re all made up of atoms, right? Really just a collection of atoms bouncing around. Atoms make up everything. Atoms are always here. They don’t ever leave, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," I said, my eyes fixed on a tuft of cloud floating free.
"So when we die, we don’t really leave, do we? Just...change, right? Our atoms become something else, the grass, the trees, birds. We’re always here. Am I right?"
Verlaine adjusted her body and studied Cheryl’s face. "If you want it to be."
"Why does it have to be so hard? Why did it have to be Todd?"
Verlaine sat up and pulled her to her and hugged her and let her tears flow.
We rose from the cold earth. Verlaine and Ingrid helped Cheryl brush off her dress and dry her eyes.
"I’m okay, really. I’m done."
"We need to get you back home,"Verlaine said, "I promised your family."
"Yes, I know." She shrugged her shoulders.
On the way back to the Volkswagen, Cheryl stopped and looked at us. "I need your phone numbers and addresses. I don’t want to lose you guys." She opened her small black purse. " I have a pen. Do you have anything to write on?"
We stood silent for a second, I finally said, " I don’t. No."
"That’s okay. Write on my arm! I do it all the time." She held out her pen.
Verlaine was first and printed out her address and phone at school and at her home. She handed the pen to me. I held Cheryl’s wrist and wrote my information under Verlaine’s.
"I will print my address in Nice," Ingrid said as she scrawled across Cheryl’s arm, "but no phone. It is too expensive to call."
"Too, cool! I’ve never known anyone who lived in France! Hold out your arm, Ingrid and I’ll give you my address and phone. But, don’t worry about calling me, I’ll understand, just a card or a letter from you in France would be fantastic!"
We each held out our arms and let Cheryl write her address across our skin. But we didn’t stop there. I wrote my address and phone on Ingrid’s arm and then she returned the favor and Verlaine added her’s and by the end ,we all had our forearms tattooed with addresses and phone numbers.
"What are we," I laughed, admiring the blue calligraphy up and down our arms, "a cult?"
"No, a gang!" Cheryl, said.
"Non!" Ingrid put in, "a bande a part. Just like the Godard film!"
"Enough with the Godard," I said.
"Non! It means a band of outsiders. We are this, oui?"
"Yes!" Cheryl shouted. "Ingrid I love you! I love all you guys! We are a band of outsiders! How do you say it in French again?"
"Bande a part."
"Bande a part," Cheryl diligently repeated.
"When will I ever learn?" I sighed.
"Never, Jase," Verlaine bumped me with her arm. "Haven’t you figured that out yet?"
When we reached the V.W., we piled into the cramped interior. Cheryl sat in back with me. She wanted to know all about Todd/ Warlock. The things we had done together, what he hadn’t put in a letter or talked to her about on the phone. I told the truth and I told some lies. I sanded the rough surface from the truth and buffed the lies smooth. I told her about the time at the Laundromat; the times I saw Warlock play his guitar, so righteous. And I told her as much as I could about his last day and what I did to Seth afterwards. She sat still intent, I could tell she was memorizing it all, storing and cataloging it.
The home had a calculated charm. The yard too manicured. It explained a lot about Warlock. Verlaine coasted around the circular drive and pulled to a stop.
"Take care of yourself, Cheryl," Verlaine said, her hands stuffed in her back pockets. "We’re all on your side."
"Thanks." Cheryl replied, "‘a bande a part’! Ingrid, did I screw it up?"
She shook her head. "Non. Il est bon." She ran over and hugged her.
" Whatever we can do just let us know," I added.
"I’m glad my brother knew you guys, and..." her mouth quivered. Verlaine came over and put her arms around Cheryl."And now I know you, too," she managed.
Ingrid and I laid our arms over Verlaine’s . "We’re with you. Keep it together, okay?" I said. Ingrid and I turned toward the car.
Verlaine grasped Cheryl’s chin in her hand and held her dark eyes level with hers. "Stay cool, that’s all you need to do. Stay as cool as you are."
"I will, you know I will. You write, okay?"
"That’s a deal." Verlaine walked around to the driver’s side. She beeped the horn when she got in and we waved as Cheryl waved back diminishing in the distance as we pulled out of the drive and drove down the quiet tree-lined street.
Before we left Dwight, we stopped to ‘pool’ our resources and fill ‘the bug’ at a gas station. We picked up coffee and snacks for the road.
Somewhere, on the way back to Bloomington, as night began to shroud the trees, I rolled down the window and threw out the rest of the brownies. I knew there was no hash in them, but I tried to imagine how a coyote or racoon would act if they got ‘high’. It brought a smile to my face.
Verlaine had the radio blasting, the little paper speaker throbbing, ready to tear, the whole way back to Indiana, but we never heard, ‘King Midas in Reverse’, or ‘Do you Believe in Magic’ played again.
The next days and weeks toppled into one another like the fabled dominoes the government had warned all those countries in South-East Asia would become, if South Vietnam ever fell. I didn’t see much of Hunter, but that wasn’t anything new. I had mostly vanished myself from the room. I was spending more time at the library. Mr. Wolfenberger came again to the dorm and finally packed up Wolfman’s stuff in that terribly empty room. I helped him. But I never told him that I had seen his son in Illinois. I don’t know why. I felt it was just between Wolfman and me, a shared secret, a trust. Seth pretty much stayed out of my way. One time I entered the dining hall and saw him leap up from his table and slam his tray on the conveyer belt and run out. That made me feel good. I didn’t see Verlaine much at all, either. Ingrid and I still went out. The last movie we saw together was a revival of a Godard film at the Von Lee, ‘A Bande Apart’. It was too much of a coincidence, I was beginning to believe in conspiracies. Afterwards we went back to her room. Verlaine was ‘away’.
The first thing she did was pick up an album off a stack by the record player. "Have you ever heard Francoise Hardy?"
"No, is she rock?" I noticed my photo-booth pictures on her desk. We had them taken when we first met as a goof. But now Ingrid’s image had been cut off. "Ingrid!?" I held one up. "What gives ?"
She swept up the small black and white photos. "For my wallet." She snatched the one from my hand and slammed them shut in a drawer.
"I don’t think I believe you."
"Jason you are wrong. They were too large to fit. Comprendre?" She pushed the album cover into my hands. "She is beautiful? The rendering is good?"
It was a pencil portrait, bangs swept across the forehead of a wide-eyed, very determined-looking young woman.
"Yeah, it’s well-done." I answered distracted.
She slipped the record out of it’s sleeve and placed it on the turntable. "Listen to her songs." She touched the tone-arm down.
The voice was soothing, the music smooth and light, low-key. Of course I didn’t understand a word, it was in French. I turned off the room light and crossed back to where she stood. She leaned into me and I caressed her hair. Ingrid hummed the tune playing, softly to herself. Our eyes led and our lips followed. We kissed, toying with each other’s clothes before shedding them. It was slow this time. We savored our love-making. Afterwards, I flipped the record over. Ingrid lit one of her Gitanes, that solitary match like a bright little flag guided me back as she waved it out. I slid into the narrow bed, and massaged her feet with mine.
In languor she looked at me. "Qui etait beau," she whispered. "You know how to please me."
"I’m glad. I want to." I rubbed her thigh.
She blew her smoke out thoughtfully. "Jason, what will you do if you fail your courses?"
"I don’t know."
"You will fight in Vietnam?" She glanced at me.
" I hope not."
"I do not want this for you." I could smell the pungent Gitane halo me, her warm face close to mine. "You will go to Canada, yes?"
"No, I can’t. My parents wouldn’t understand. They would think I was a coward."
"You live your life for parents?"
I slipped my foot from hers. "I can’t humiliate them."
"Jason, if you go to Vietnam they will make you kill, or you will be killed. Humiliation, this you worry about?" She shook her head and expelled a fume of smoke. "You must leave, leave this country. This is what you must do."
"I can’t do that." My body felt chill.
"Yes, you can. You have to decide, what will make you leave?"
"Nothing," I considered that. "You. I’d leave for you.
"Pffaf!" she blew out the last of her Gitane and stubbed it out. "This is foolish. You would leave for this, for sex?"
"No. For you."
"This is impossible. The sex is making you say this." She looked at me.
"No. Everything is impossible, this night, this bed, us together. Warlock’s death. My stupid grades are impossible, but I can’t change them."
She threw the sheet back. "This you must decide. But now you go. I do not want you in more trouble."
I groped around for my pants and fumbled them on. Then Ingrid was beside me. She grabbed my shirt off the floor and pulled it over her head.
"Hey!"
"Please. I want to wear, a souvenir."
"Sure, it looks great on you. Anyway, I don’t have far to go."
"Hold me Jason."
I wrapped my arms around her and pressed my face in the warm scent of her hair.
"When I leave, you will take me to the airport?"
"I raised her head and looked in the shadows that held her eyes. "Yes, of course. I want to."
" Je t’aime, Jason," she said, placing her hands on my cheeks, and kissed me.
I drew my lips from hers. "Ingrid, there are some French words I do understand." My lips found hers again.
In the following days I would like to say, I got it together at last. The papers I turned in were insightful and concise, the final tests held no surprises. But I did stumble. There was too much to make up for, in too short a time. When the books were closed and the pens capped, my final G. P. A. was 1.87. Not quite good enough for the university, but more than acceptable to the government. My dad and I visited the counselor, but the options were few. Outside of divine intercession, my college days were over.
My dad helped me pack my boxes and load my suitcases in the car. I asked Hunter what he would do with the DX sign that still hung on our wall.
"Leave it," he replied, " the cleaning lady can have it."
It was too big for our car. It seemed sad, like leaving an Oscar unclaimed.
The trip home was long. My dad tried to lift my spirits but the silences were awkward.
My mom was glad to see me. But the house smelled unfamiliar and seemed somehow smaller.
The next day, I drove back down to Bloomington in my Charger to pick up Ingrid and take her to the Airport. I said my goodbyes to Verlaine. We hugged. She cried. I told her I’d make out okay, somehow. The wrapped canvas I did for her leaned against a large corrugated box ready to be carried out from their soon to be empty room.
On the drive to the airport, the usually reserved, Ingrid, filled my ears with her talk about France and Nice, the Cote d’Azur, how incredibly blue, the Mediterranean, the sunlight, Monet, Matisse, and Cezanne. She told me of all the places she had flown to, ever since she was a little girl. She asked me if I had ever been up in a jet, was I scared to fly. I managed to answer no. She told me I must do it someday.
After I parked in the lot, I retrieved a cart for her luggage and we rode up in the elevator. She picked up her tickets at the counter and checked in her luggage. We went to a newsstand and she bought a magazine. In the waiting area we found two of the orange modular chairs empty and sat next to each other. I looked over her shoulder as she flipped the pages. She smiled.
Soon her plane landed and rolled across the tarmac. The passengers disembarked in the crowded space, some to joyous reunions, others quickly shouldered through. When the flow of people thinned, they announced that her flight was now boarding. We stood and she smoothed her hair and slung her bag over her shoulder.
"Au revoir, Jason." She gave me a quick hug. "I am no good at goodbyes." I saw a tear escape her eye as she turned and hurried along the narrow boarding tunnel.
"Bye, Ingrid!" I waved at her.
" Decide, Jason!" She called back, as the passengers pushed her along.
I puzzled at that. She must have said, ‘Goodbye, Jason.’ By the time I heard it, she was out of sight. I waited to see her plane taxi, I thought I saw her at a window. The jet lifted it’s nose into the sky and with a roar folded it’s wheels into it’s belly.
I rode the long escalator down and walked silently across the parking lot and got into my car. The sun was all ready heating up the interior. I plugged the key into the ignition and sat. I let the past and present braid together. I backed out of the space and finally merged onto I-465. I almost missed my exit.
I felt I should drive out to visit Karen’s grave but I didn’t. I drove home.
The next week I spent unpacking and settling in to the familiar ebb and flow of my life. I got a letter from Cheryl. That was good. I wondered if Verlaine and Ingrid received one also. But mostly, I would cruise around town late at night, not looking for anything, maybe waiting for something. I sought out the dark side streets.
Then early in June, very late one night, at home, the downstairs phone rang and rang. The phosphorescent dial on my clock read 3:47.
I heard my dad call out, "Jason! Jason, answer that phone!"
Groggy, I padded downstairs and picked up the receiver. "Hello," I slurred.
"Jase? Jase! They’ve done it! Oh, Jase."
"Verlaine?"
"They shot Bobby!" Her voice was breaking up.
" What?!"
"The Ambassador Hotel. They killed him! They shot him! He won the primary and they shot him!"
"I can’t believe it."
"Turn on your T.V., your radio. It’s all over," she said between racking sobs. "I just don’t understand. Why!? Why, did they have to? I’ve got to hang up, Jase."
"No, please, Verlaine."
The receiver at the other end clicked . I was left with the drone of distance. I hung up.
In the darkness, I stumbled into the living room, turned on the glare of the T. V. and dropped to the couch. It was true. The black and white images came streaming out, terrible and inevitable. Robert Kennedy had been assassinated just like his brother. I doubled over and rubbed my face with my hands. I finally had to turn it off. I watched the bright white dot in the center fade into nothing.
I passed my parents’ room on my way back to bed and heard my dad mumble, who had called.
"Just Verlaine, from school," I answered, then added, in a flat voice, "Someone shot Bobby Kennedy. He’s dead."
I heard his tired voice, "My God, hasn’t that family been through enough."
I climbed the stairs. In my bed, I stared at the ceiling until it became the back of my eyelids and the remains of the night settled over me.
Not long after that sad and terrible night, I received my notice in the mail to report to the Indianapolis induction center for my physical. An old orange school bus was waiting at the local post office to transport us there. One guy from a well connected family, didn’t show up. The rumor was he had switched religions to become a Mormon and thus a conscientious objector.
Downtown, we were disgorged into a building that had the architectural splendor of a brick and funneled into a windowless beige room to fill out forms. I came across one page where I had to state that I was not a member of any of the following radical organizations or gangs that wanted to over-throw the government. The list was two pages long. I was impressed. After that I stripped to my underwear with the rest and peed into a cup, next a doctor imprinted his cold stethoscope on my chest. For the final humiliation we were lined-up in two rows and told to drop ‘trow’ and cough as another doctor shoved his fingers into our groins. I noticed a sergeant draped over the glass partition behind me ogling us. I felt ill as I put on my clothes.
Out on the street I had to double over to retch into the gutter. There were a few snickers and comments. Everyone sat away from me on the bus ride back .
The next day in the mail, I received the package. It was plain, an over-sized manilla envelope, reinforced and bound with string. It was plastered with foreign stamps, red, blue and green. Some I recognized depicted Marianne, blouse torn open, tattered flag in hand, symbol of French liberty. There was no return address, but I could guess who it was from. I smiled as I cut the string.
Inside was a record album with the word, ‘deux’, scrawled in pen on the cover, and two smaller packages, marked ‘un’, ‘trois’. I looked for a letter to explain this number puzzle but there was none. The items had simply been labeled one, two, three. That much I knew. I recognized the face on the LP, her wide eyes staring confidently out. It was Francoise Hardy. The record Ingrid had played when we made love that last night. On the back, the title of the first song read, ‘Comment te Dire Adieu’. Goodbye? I unwrapped the bundle marked ‘un’. It had to be paperbacks. Great, books I wouldn’t be able to understand either. I laughed, as the paper revealed a French-English dictionary, and a French phrase book. Of course, ‘deux’! Listen to the record! I slipped it out of the glossy paper sleeve and placed it on the turntable. The brown and white label, ‘Vogue’, began to spin as I picked up the little dictionary and thumbed to the word, ‘comment’. I sat and listened, turned the pages and figured it out, ‘It Hurts to Say Goodbye.’ I thought about that. One song sounded familiar. I played it over and over. What was it? Da -da-da- lone-some town. Ricky Nelson’s ‘Lonesome Town’. It hit me! Ingrid had written a letter. I spent the day pouring over the lyric sheet, listening to the album and thumbing through the books. I rocked back on my bed in the realization that Ingrid had finally made me learn French.
I had almost forgotten the narrow folder marked, ‘trois’. I opened it and two things fell out. I caught the little blue book. At first couldn’t comprehend what I held in my hand. I folded it open and there was my photo. The same one I had found on her desk, the Photo-Booth picture that she had trimmed her face from. Now I knew why. It was to be my Passport photo. But how? You had to apply in person for a Passport and it took at least six months to process these things. This had to be fake. Ingrid would never...Verlaine! The ground shifted under me. Sure, Verlaine. It had to be. I wouldn’t it put it past her. I picked up the oblong piece of cardboard that had fluttered to the floor. It was an airline ticket, Air-France, departure from New York . I couldn’t swallow when I saw the date stamped, three days from now.
Francoise Hardy was still singing when I jumped down the stairs and ran to my car. I shouted , "I’ll be back," to whoever might be within earshot of my voice.
In town, I pumped a couple gallons into my car. I had to drive around and think. Think? No, I had to decide. I stopped at the bank and closed out my savings account. I should have more than enough for a ticket on a Greyhound headed to New York City.
I spent the rest of the week organizing my things. I packed only essentials in my two suitcases and stashed them under my bed. I couldn’t tell my parents. They wouldn’t understand. I wrote out a note. That was best. I’d make sure to hug them at some point. That’s all I could do.
At dinner, the last night at home, I pushed the food around my plate. My mom was worried about me. She knew I would be reclassified 1-A, now that I didn’t have a college deferment, and that meant Vietnam.
My dad finally spoke, "Jason, there are things we can still do, enroll you in a summer session at the university and see if we can’t get your G.P.A. back up, so you could re-enroll in the fall," he drank from his water glass, "or barring that...I know Fred Ingle, the head of the local draft board. There are things I can do."
I looked at him. All I said was, "No, don’t."
THE END