Part 21 (1/2)
”Basketball's nothing. An absolute zero. Jim Don plays basketball and that's the only reason I even like to cheer at the games. He's captain of the football team, you know. I never saw you at any of the football games. Where'd you normally sit?”
”I never went to any games.”
”Boy, you sure are eaten up with school spirit, aren't you, Ben? My daddy's trying to break me and Jim Don up. But he'll never be able to do it. I just hope Jim Don doesn't see us tonight. He beat up one boy that dated me.”
”Oh, that's great,” Ben said, instinctively checking the rearview mirror.
”He's insanely jealous. But he's so sweet. I just hope he doesn't see us tonight. He told me he'd be out cruising looking for us.”
”We won't go anywhere where he can see us.”
”Oh we have to. We just have to. We have to make the scene at the Shack. My daddy told me to show you where all the gang hangs out. Jim Don has a new Impala. He packed tomatoes last summer and made enough money for a big down payment. Are those Weejuns you're wearing?” she asked Ben.
”What?” Ben asked.
”Weejuns. Loafers. Everyone at the school wears Weejuns.”
”No, they're just loafers. I don't know what kind they are.”
”That's a Gant s.h.i.+rt, isn't it?”
”It might be. Mom bought it at the PX yesterday.”
”No, it's not Gant,” she said impatiently. ”The PX doesn't sell them and there's no loop at the back.”
”It's Ivy League, though,” Ben offered. ”It's got b.u.t.tons on the collar.”
”That's no big deal.”
”I've never been to the Shack,” Ben said.
”It's real close to the colored high school. The cutest colored boys in the whole universe work there. They'll just die if they see me with you.”
Ansley turned the dial until she heard the Ape bellow from WAPE in Jacksonville. ”Every car in the Shack will be tuned to the Big APE,” she said, singing along with the music.
Ben turned into the parking lot of the Shack as Ansley slid down in the front seat until her head was not visible to anyone looking in through the driver's side of the car. To his mortification, Ben could see people laughing as they spotted the squadron decals on the side of the car. Choosing the loneliest, most desolate spot he could find, he backed under an overhanging tree in the far corner of the lot. Only then did Ansley's eyes rise to window level and make a peremptory examination of the other cars.
”You don't mind if I say 'hi' to a few of my friends, Ben. I see some cheerleaders and their boyfriends parked over there under the light. Order me a cheeseburger without onions, a Coca-Cola, medium, and a large order of fries if Lewis comes while I'm gone,” she said, blowing him a kiss through the window. She seemed shamelessly gratified to be escaping Ben's presence.
Ben rolled down the window and leaned his elbow on the door. He tried to tighten up his face into a mask of insouciance, worldliness, and control. His stomach, though, felt like a s.h.i.+p breaking up on invisible shoals. As Ansley went from car to car, Ben watched her secretly, watching her leaning her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into other boys' arms, flirting with a self-indulgent expertise that seemed vilely calculating from Ben's observation post. Her perfume lingered in the car and attacked him in the soft places of his boyhood. He saw her point his car out to a crowd of faces he half recognized, then he heard her high-pitched giggle and the laughter of her companions; he turned the radio up louder. He stole another look and saw how achingly pretty she was, this curving, mindless nymphet who had perfected the insensate cruelties and the small meannesses of adolescence and sent them marching in snickering battalions toward Ben. Sitting there in the half-darkness, Ben felt cheapened, irreparably damaged by this girl he had known most of his life. But he was not surprised. He knew intuitively that girls like Ansley would elude him always, dance away from him, mocking him, whispering about him in those savagely thoughtless cl.u.s.ters of children living in the pure oxygen of their ordained season. Ansley was part of an aristocracy that brooked no intrusion, at least not now, Ben thought.
Ben ordered two cheeseburgers without onions, two medium Coca-Colas, and two large orders of fries when Lewis, a tall, expressionless black, came to take his order. He was grateful to Lewis just for coming to his car. When the cheeseburgers came, Ben glanced toward Ansley to see if she would return to the car when the order arrived. But she remained where she was in the middle of several football players. Her fingers were traveling secretly to their necks, running along their collars.
Then he saw Jim Don Cooper's car pull up beside her. He watched as Ansley entered the car, rushed across the seat, and kissed him long and pa.s.sionately on the lips. They talked, made out some more, then talked again. He saw Jim Don turn completely around in his seat and stare belligerently at Ben. ”Oh great,” Ben thought, ”now he comes over and beats the s.h.i.+t out of me while I'm sitting in the Werewolf Squadron car.” But Jim Don did not leave his car; Ansley did. With her girlish, provocative gait, she ran over to Ben's side of the car and began eating french fries as she whispered to Ben.
”Ben, I want you to be the sweetest boy in the world and let me spend the rest of the night with my steady. We're going to a party one of the cheerleaders is giving out at the beach. You don't mind, do you?”
”No, Ansley, I don't mind at all,” Ben said.
”You're so sweet. I told Jim Don you'd be glad to help us out. Now you won't mention this to your parents, will you, Ben?”
”No. I won't say a word.”
”O.K. Bye-bye. And I really had a great time with you tonight. I mean that seriously. You have a wonderful personality. And thanks tons for being so understanding,” she said, leaving the car.
”Do you want your cheeseburger?” Ben asked.
”No, you eat mine too. Jim Don just ordered me one,” she said, turning and running back toward the Impala.
No one seemed to notice the car after its abandonment by Ansley Matthews; no one seemed to notice the modest solitaire of Ben in his fall from the grandeur of courting cheerleaders. He was skewered by the eyes of strangers no longer. Thank G.o.d for the Big APE radio in Jacksonville that sang to Ben with the same dispa.s.sion it sang to every other car in the Shack. Ben ate his cheeseburger slowly, thinking about what he could do for the rest of the evening, knowing he could not return home early to face the interrogation of his parents or the teasing of Mary Anne.
He started up the car, his eyes burning. Good-bye, my cheerleader, my first date. Good-bye my colonel's daughter, my dark-lashed d.u.c.h.ess, my beauty, my brown-eyed queen. Good-bye my one-hour bride, my sixty-minute love, my redlipped empress, my Weejun-shod inamorata. Why do I love you and girls like you? Ben thought. Why do I love you in secret? Then coldly, as he looked at her again, one final time, as he drove his car past her boyfriend's Impala, as he saw her laugh at the decal and point, it was then that he knew her for the first time and he had an urge to lean out of his window and cavalierly shout au revoir to his enemy.
In a fury, he turned from the Shack and drove toward town. He didn't see the car pull out behind him and follow him. He heard a car blowing its horn at him as he pulled in front of the National Cemetery on Granville Street. Pulling over to the curb, Ben peered into the interior of a red and black Rambler American that pulled alongside of him. Ben turned out his lights and waited for the driver of the Rambler to identify himself. The Rambler pulled in front of him and a small-boned boy leaped out of the car and walked back toward Ben with a ludicrously exaggerated swagger.
”You're probably saying to yourself, Ben, that a true stud like Sammy Wertzberger always has a date with some gorgeous honey on a Sat.u.r.day night. But it just so happens that I'm resting my body from a drive-in movie last night where I was attacked again and again by a lovely nymphomaniac.”
”Sammy. I've never been so glad to see anybody in my whole life.”
”I just heard about what Ansley the a.s.shole did to you. I thought you'd already left when I saw you pull out.”
”I've known her for a long time. She used to be pretty nice.”
”Why don't you ride shotgun up there in the Jewish submarine and I'll show you the town. Maybe then we can catch the late movie at the Breeze Theater.”
”That sounds great to me.”
”Let's make like horses.h.i.+t and hit the trail.”
”Thanks for following me, Sammy.”
”The night is young,” Sammy said to Ben. ”And there are thousands of women waiting to get their hands on the both of us.”
Chapter 16.
Ravenel had a single Catholic priest and his name was Thomas Aquinas Pinckney, a thin tubercular man who stood six feet seven inches tall and was rumored to drink too much of the blood of Christ at the Consecration. When Father Pinckney opened his rectory door, bending down to duck his head beneath the doorway, the first thing the new colonel said to him was, ”My name is Colonel Bull Meecham, Father. I think it's a disgrace that this burg doesn't have a Catholic school. And since you're the C.O., I hold you personally responsible.”
”Boston?” the priest asked.
”No, Father, Chicago,” Bull answered.
”Come in, Colonel, and we'll drink something sinful while we discuss this important spiritual matter.”
Bull had mostly listened that first day as this stricken, energetic man paced the sitting room of his rectory speaking with a mellifluous ba.s.so profundo voice that demanded and received unwavering attention. His gestures were theatrical and wild, generated by an animal impatience that possessed his body. ”Colonel,” he shouted, ”do you realize that Red China has more Roman Catholics than the state of South Carolina. And do you realize that the good Sisters of Mercy are strained to the very limits of endurance to send us one good sister to labor in the vineyards of Ravenel. And Colonel, do you, in your wisdom, understand that numbers dictate the Bishop's decision over whether to build a Catholic school in Ravenel. We are growing, yes, but as for a Catholic school, we are many years from such a prodigious undertaking.”
”Begging your Father's pardon,” Bull said, ”but baloney.”