YOU’D THINK my old man was the Pope’s nephew or something if you’d seen how wild he went when he learned I’d been sneaking off Sundays to Faith Baptist Church. Instead of going to eleven o’clock Mass like he figured I was.
Which is kind of funny. Because although Mom is solid R.C. – eight o’clock Mass and saying a rosary at the drop of a hat – nobody ever accused Pop of being a religious fanatic by no means. He goes to confession regular like an oil change, every five thousand miles, or Easter, whichever comes first.
Take the Knights of Columbus. He wouldn’t join those guys for no money. Whenever Mom starts in on him about enlisting he just answers back that he can’t afford the outlay on armour and where’d we keep a horse? Which is his idea of a joke. So it isn’t exactly as if he was St. Joan of Arc himself to go criticizing me.
And Pop wouldn’t have been none the wiser if it wasn’t for my older brother Gene, the prick. Don’t think I don’t know who told. But I can’t expect nothing different from that horse’s ass.
So, as I was saying, my old man didn’t exactly take it all in stride. “Baptists! Baptists! I’m having your head examined. Do you hear me? I’m having it examined! Just keep it up and see if I don’t, you crazy little pecker. They roll in the aisles. Baptists, for chrissakes!”
“I been three times already and nobody rolled in an aisle once.”
“Three times? Three times? Now it all comes out. Three, eh?” He actually hits himself in the forehead with the heel of his palm. Twice. “Jesus Christ Almighty, I’m blessed with a son like this? What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you ever do something I can understand?”
“Like wrecking cars?” This is a swift kick in the old fun sack. Pop’s just getting over Gene’s totalling off the first new car he’s bought in eight years. A 1966 Chevy Impala.
“Shut your smart mouth. Don’t go dragging your brother into this. Anyway, what he done to the car was accidental. But not you. Oh no, you marched into that collection of religious screwballs, holy belly-floppers, and linoleum-beaters under your own steam. On purpose. For God’s sake, Billy, that’s no religion that – it’s exercise. Stay away from them Baptists.”
“Can’t,” I says to him.
“Can’t? Can’t? Why the hell not?”
“Matter of principle.”
They teach us that in school, matters of principle. I swear it’s a plot to get us all slaughtered the day they graduate us out the door. It’s their revenge, see? Here we are reading books in literature class about some banana who’s only got one oar in the water to start with, and then he pops it out worrying about principles. Like that Hamlet, or what’s his name in A Tale of Two Cities. Ever notice how many of those guys are alive at the end of those books they teach us from?
“I’ll principle you,” says the old man.
The only teacher who maybe believes all that crock of stale horseshit about principles is Miss Clark, who’s fresh out of wherever they bake Social Studies teachers. She’s got principles on the brain. For one thing, old Clarkie has pretty nearly wallpapered her room with pictures of that Negro, Martin Luther King, and some character who’s modelling the latest in Wabasso sheets and looks like maybe he’d kill for a hamburger – Gandhi is his name – and that hairy old fart Tolstoy, who wrote the books you need a front-end loader to lift. From what Clarkie tells us, I gather they’re what you call nonviolent shit-disturbers.
Me too. Being a smart-ass runs in the Simpson family. It’s what you call hereditary, like a disease. That’s why all of a sudden, before I even think for chrissakes, I hear myself lecturing the old man in this fruity voice that’s a halfway decent imitation of old Clarkie, and I am using the exact words which I’ve heard her say myself.
“Come, come, surely by this day and age everybody has progressed to the point where we can all agree on the necessity of freedom of worship. If we can’t agree on anything else, at least we can agree on that.”
I got news for her. My old man don’t agree to no such thing. He up and bangs me one to the side of the head. A backhander special. You see, nobody in our house is allowed an opinion until they’re twenty-one.
Of course, I could holler Religious Persecution. Not that it would do any good. But it’s something I happen to know quite a bit about, seeing as Religious Persecution was my assignment in Social Studies that time we studied Man’s Inhumanity to Man. The idea was to write a two-thousand-word report proving how everybody has been a shit to everybody else through the ages, and where did it ever get them? This is supposed to improve us somehow, I guess.
Anyway, as usual anything good went fast. Powbrowski got A. Hitler, Keller put dibs on Ivan the Terrible, Langly asked for Genghis Khan. By the time old Clarkie got around to me there was just a bunch of crap left like No Votes For Women. So I asked, please, could I do a project on Mr. Keeler? Keeler is the dim-witted bat’s fart who’s principal of our school.
For being rude, Miss Clark took away my “privilege” of picking and said I had to do Religious Persecution. Everybody was avoiding that one like the plague.
Actually, I found Religious Persecution quite interesting. It’s got principles too, number one being that whatever you’re doing to some poor son of a bitch – roasting his chestnuts over an open fire, or stretching his pant-leg from a 29-incher to a 36-incher on the rack – why, you’re doing it for his own good. So he’ll start thinking right. Which is more or less what my old man was saying when he told me I can’t go out of the house on Sundays any more. He says to me, “You aren’t setting a foot outside of that door [he actually points at it] of a Sunday until you come to your senses and quit with all the Baptist bullshit.”
Not that that’s any heavy-duty torture. What he don’t know is that these Baptists have something called Prayer, Praise and Healing on Wednesday nights. My old man hasn’t locked me up Wednesday nights yet by no means.
I figure if my old man wants somebody to blame for me becoming a Baptist he ought to take a peek in my older brother Gene’s direction. He started it.
Which sounds awful funny if you know anything about Gene. Because if Gene was smart enough to have ever thought about it, he’d come out pretty strong against religion, since it’s generally opposed to most things he’s in favour of.
Still, nobody thinks the worse of my brother for doing what he likes to do. They make a lot of excuses for you in a dinky mining town that’s the arsehole of the world if you bat.456 and score ninety-eight goals in a thirty-five-game season. Shit, last year they passed the hat around to all the big shots on the recreation board and collected the dough for one of Gene’s liquor fines and give it to him on the q.t.
But I’m trying to explain my brother. If I had to sum him up I’d probably just say he’s the kind of guy doesn’t have to dance. What I mean is, you take your average, normal female: they slobber to dance. The guys that stand around leaning against walls are as popular to them as syphilis. You don’t dance, you’re a pathetic dope – even the ugly ones despise you.
But not Gene. He don’t dance and they all cream. You explain it. Do they figure he’s too superior to be bothered? Because it’s not true. I’m his brother and I know. The dink just can’t dance. That simple. But if I mention this little fact to anybody, they look at me like I been playing out in the sun too long. Everybody around here figures Mr. Wonderful could split the fucking atom with a hammer and a chisel if he put his mind to it.
Well, almost everybody. There’s a born doubter in every crowd. Ernie Powers is one of these. He’s the kind of stupid fuck who’s sure they rig the Stanley Cup and the Oscars and nobody even went up in space. Everything is a hoax to him. Yet he believes professional wrestling is on the up and up. You wonder – was he dropped on his head, or what? Otherwise you got to have a plan to grow up that ignorant.
So it was just like Einstein to bet Gene ten dollars he couldn’t take out Nancy Williams. He did that while we were eating a plate of chips and gravy together in the Rite Spot and listening to Gene going on about who’s been getting the benefit of his poking lately. Powers, who is a very jealous person because he’s going steady with his right hand, says, oh yeah sure, maybe her, but he’d bet ten bucks somebody like Nancy Williams in 11B wouldn’t even go out with Gene.
“Get serious,” says my brother when he hears that. He considers himself irresistible to the opposite sex.
“Ten bucks. She’s strictly off-limits even to you, Mr. Dreamboat. It’s all going to waste. That great little gunga-poochy-snuggy-bum, that great matched set. Us guys in 11B, you know what we call them? The Untouchables. Like on TV.”
“What a fucking sad bunch. Untouchables for you guys, maybe. If any of you queers saw a real live piece of pelt you’d throw your hat over it and run.”
“Talk’s cheap,” says Ernie, real offended. “You don’t know nothing about her. My sister says Miss High-and-Mighty didn’t go out for cheerleading because the outfits was too revealing. My sister says Nancy Williams belongs to some religion doesn’t allow her to dance. Me, I saw her pray over a hard-boiled egg for about a half-hour before she ate it in the school lunch-room. Right out where anybody could see, she prayed. No way somebody like that is going to go out with you, Simpson. If she does I’ll eat my shorts.”
“Start looking for the ten bucks, shitface, and skip dinner, because I’m taking Nancy Williams to the Christmas Dance,” my brother answers him right back. Was Gene all of a sudden hostile or was he hostile? I overheard our hockey coach say one time that my brother Gene’s the kind of guy rises to a challenge. The man’s got a point. I lived with Gene my whole life, which is sixteen years now, and I ought to know. Unless he gets mad he’s useless as tits on a boar.
You better believe Gene was mad. He called her up right away from the pay phone in the Rite Spot. It was a toss-up as to which of those two jerks was the most entertaining. Powers kept saying, “There’s no way she’ll go out with him. No way.” And every time he thought of parting with a ten-spot, a look came over his face like he just pinched a nut or something. The guy’s so christly tight he squeaks when he walks. He was sharing my chips and gravy, if you know what I mean?
And then there was Gene. I must say I’ve always enjoyed watching him operate. I mean, even on the telephone he looks so sincere I could just puke. It’s not unconscious by no means. My brother explained to me once what his trick is. To look that way you got to think that way is his motto. “What I do, Billy,” he told me once, “is make myself believe, really believe, say… well, that an H-bomb went off, or that some kind of disease which only attacks women wiped out every female on the face of the earth but the one I’m talking to. That makes her the last piece of tail on the face of the earth, Billy! It’s just natural then to be extra nice.” Even though he’s my brother, I swear to God he had to been left on our doorstep.
Of course, you can’t argue with success. As soon as Gene hung up and smiled, Powers knew he was diddled. Once. But my brother don’t show much mercy. Twice was coming. Nancy Williams had a cousin staying with her for Christmas vacation. She wondered if maybe Gene could get this cousin a date? When Powers heard that, he pretty nearly went off in his pants. Nobody’ll go out with him. He’s fat and he sweats and he never brushes his teeth, there’s stuff grows on them looks like the crap that floats on top of a slough. Even the really desperate girls figure no date is less damaging to their reputations than a date with Powers. You got to hold the line somewhere is how they look at it.
So Ernie’s big yap cost him fifteen dollars. He blew that month’s baby bonus (which his old lady gives him because he promises to finish school) and part of his allowance. The other five bucks is what he had to pay when Gene sold him Nancy Williams’ cousin. It damn near killed him.
All right. Maybe I ought to’ve said something when Gene marched fat Ernie over to the Bank of Montreal to make a withdrawal on this account Powers has had since he was seven and started saving for a bike. He never got around to getting the bike because he couldn’t bring himself to ever see that balance go down. Which is typical.
Already then I knew Ernie wasn’t taking the cousin to no Christmas Dance. I’d heard once too often from that moron how Whipper Billy Watson would hang a licking on Cassius Clay, or how all the baseball owners get together in the spring to decide which team will win the World Series in the fall. He might learn to keep his hole shut for once.
The thing is I’d made up my mind to take the cousin. For nothing. It just so happens that, Gene being mad, he’d kind of forgot he’s not allowed to touch the old man’s vehicle. Seeing as he tied a chrome granny knot around a telephone pole with the last one.
Gene didn’t realize it yet but he wasn’t going nowhere unless I drove. And I was going to drive because I’d happened to notice Nancy Williams around. She seemed like a very nice person who maybe had what Miss Clark says are principles. I suspected that if that was true, Gene for once was going to strike out, and no way was I going to miss that. Fuck, I’d have killed to see that. No exaggeration.
On the night of the Christmas Dance it’s snowing like a bitch. Not that it’s cold for December, mind you, but snowing. Sticky, sloppy stuff that almost qualifies for sleet, coming down like crazy. I had to put the windshield wipers on. In December yet.
Nancy Williams lives on the edge of town way hell and gone, in new company housing. The mine manager is the dick who named it Green Meadows. What a joke. Nobody lives there seen a blade of grass yet nor pavement neither. They call it Gumboot Flats because if it’s not frozen it’s mud. No street-lights neither. It took me a fuck of a long time to find her house in the dark. When I did I shut off the motor and me and Gene just sat.
“Well?” I says after a bit. I was waiting for Gene to get out first.
“Well what?”
“Well, maybe we should go get them?”
Gene didn’t answer. He leans across me and plays “Shave and a haircut, two bits” on the horn.
“You’re a geek,” I tell him. He don’t care.
We wait. No girls. Gene gives a couple of long, long blasts on the hooter. I was wishing he wouldn’t. This time somebody pulls open the living-room drapes. There stands this character in suspenders, for chrissakes, and a pair of pants stops about two inches shy of his armpits. He looked like somebody’s father and what you’d call belligerent.
“I think he wants us to come to the door.”
“He can want all he likes. Jesus Murphy, it’s snowing out there. I got no rubbers.”
“Oh, Christ,” I says. “I’ll go get them, Gene. It’s such a big deal.”
Easier said than done. I practically had to present a medical certificate. By the time Nancy’s father got through with me I was starting to sound like that meatball Chip on My Three Sons. Yes sir. No sir. He wasn’t too impressed with the horn-blowing episode, let me tell you. And then Nancy’s old lady totes out a Kodak to get some “snaps” for Nancy’s scrapbook. I didn’t say nothing but I felt maybe they were getting evidence for the trial in case they had to slap a charge on me later. You’d have had to see it to believe it. Here I was standing with Nancy and her cousin, grinning like I was in my right mind, flash bulbs going off in my face, nodding away to the old man, who was running a safe-driving clinic for yours truly on the sidelines. Gene, I says to myself, Gene, you’re going to pay.
At last, after practically swearing a blood oath to get his precious girls home, undamaged, by twelve-thirty, I chase the women out the door. And while they run through the snow, giggling, Stirling Moss delays me on the doorstep, in this blizzard, showing me for about the thousandth time how to pull a car out of a skid on ice. I kid you not.
From that point on everything goes rapidly downhill.
Don’t get me wrong. I got no complaints against the girls. Doreen, the cousin, wasn’t going to break no mirrors, and she sure was a lot more lively than I expected. Case in point. When I finally get to the car, fucking near frozen, what do I see? Old Doreen hauling up about a yard of her skirt, which she rolled around her waist like the spare tire on a fat guy. Then she pulled her sweater down to hide it. You bet I was staring.
“Uncle Bob wouldn’t let me wear my mini,” she says. “Got a smoke? I haven’t had one for days.”
It seems she wasn’t the only one had a bit of a problem with the dress code that night. In the back seat I could hear Nancy apologizing to Gene for the outfit her mother had made her special for the dance. Of course, I thought Nancy looked quite nice. But with her frame she couldn’t help, even though she was got up a bit peculiar. What I mean is, she had on this dress made out of the same kind of shiny material my mother wanted for drapes. But the old man said she couldn’t have it because it was too heavy. It’d pull the curtain rods off the wall.
I could tell poor old Nancy Williams sure was nervous. She just got finished apologizing for how she looked and then she started in suckholing to Gene to please excuse her because she wasn’t the world’s best dancer. As a matter of fact this was her first dance ever. Thank heavens for Doreen, who was such a good sport. She’d been teaching her to dance all week. But it takes lots and lots of practice to get the hang of it. She hoped she didn’t break his toes stepping on them. Ha ha ha. Just remember, she was still learning.
Gene said he’d be glad to teach her anything he figured she needed to know.
Nancy didn’t catch on because she doesn’t have that kind of mind. “That would be sweet of you, Gene,” she says.
The band didn’t show because of the storm. An act of God they call it. I’ll say. So I drove around this dump for about an hour while Gene tried to molest Nancy. She put up a fair-to-middling struggle from what I could hear. The stuff her dress was made of was so stiff it crackled when she moved. Sort of like tin foil. Anyway, the two of them had it snapping and crackling like a bonfire there in the back seat while they fought a pitched battle over her body. She wasn’t having none of that first time out of the chute.
“Gene!”
“Well for chrissakes, relax!”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t swear.”
“Who’s swearing?”
“Don’t snag my nylons, Gene. Gene, what in the world are you… Gene!”
“Some people don’t know when they’re having a good time,” says Doreen. I think she was a little pissed I hadn’t parked and give her some action. But Lord knows what might’ve happened to Nancy if I’d done that.
Then, all of a sudden, Nancy calls out, sounding what you’d call desperate, “Hey, everybody, who wants a Coke!”
“Nobody wants a Coke,” mumbles Gene, sort of through his teeth.
“Well, maybe we could go some place?” Meaning somewhere well-lit where this octopus will lay off for five seconds.
“I’ll take you some place,” Gene mutters. “You want to go somewhere, we’ll go to Zipper’s. Hey Billy, let’s take them to Zipper’s.”
“I don’t know, Gene…”
The way I said that perked Doreen up right away. As far as she was concerned, anything was better than driving around with a dope, looking at a snowstorm. “Hey,” she hollers, “that sounds like fun!” Fun like a mental farm.
That clinched it though. “Sure,” says Gene, “we’ll check out Zipper’s.”
What could I say?
Don’t get me wrong. Like everybody else I go to Zipper’s and do stuff you can’t do any place else in town. That’s not it. But I wouldn’t take anybody nice there on purpose. And I’m not trying to say that Zipper and his mother are bad people neither. It’s just that so many shitty things have happened to those two that they’ve become kind of unpredictable. If you aren’t used to that it can seem pretty weird.
I mean, look at Zipper. This guy is a not entirely normal human being who tries to tattoo himself with geometry dividers and India ink. He has this home poke on his arm which he claims is an American bald eagle but looks like a demented turkey or something. He did it himself, and the worst is he doesn’t know how homely that bird is. The dumb prick shows it to people to admire.
Also, I should say a year ago he quits school to teach himself to be a drummer. That’s all. He doesn’t get a job or nothing, just sits at home and drums, and his mother, who’s a widow and doesn’t know any better, lets him. I guess that that’s not any big surprise. She’s a pretty hopeless drunk who’s been taking her orders from Zipper since he was six. That’s when his old man got electrocuted out at the mine.
Still, I’m not saying that the way Zipper is is entirely his fault. Though he can be a real creep all right. Like once when he was about ten years old Momma Zipper gets a jag on and passes out naked in the bedroom, and he lets any of his friends look at his mother with no clothes on for chrissakes, if they pay him a dime. His own mother, mind you.
But in his defence I’d say he’s seen a lot of “uncles” come and go in his time, some of which figured they’d make like the man of the house and tune him in. For a while there when he was eleven, twelve maybe, half the time he was coming to school with a black eye.
Now you take Gene, he figures Zipper’s house is heaven on earth. No rules. Gene figures that’s the way life ought to be. No rules. Of course, nothing’s entirely free. At Zipper’s you got to bring a bottle or a case of beer and give Mrs. Zipper a few snorts, then everything is hunky-dory. Gene had a bottle of Five Star stashed under the back seat for the big Christmas Dance, so we were okay in that department.
But that night the lady of the house didn’t seem to be around, or mobile anyway. Zipper himself came to the door, sweating like a pig in a filthy T-shirt. He’d been drumming along to the radio.
“What do you guys want?” says Zipper.
Gene holds up the bottle. “Party time.”
“I’m practising,” says Zipper.
“So you’re practising. What’s that to us?”
“My old lady’s sleeping on the sofa,” says Zipper, opening the door wide. “You want to fuck around here you do it in the basement.” Which means his old lady’d passed out. Nobody sleeps through Zipper on the drums.
“Gene.” Nancy was looking a bit shy, believe me.
My brother didn’t let on he’d even heard her. “Do I look particular? You know me, Zip.”
Zipper looked like maybe he had to think about that one. To tell the truth, he didn’t seem quite all there. At last he says, “Sure. Sure, I know you. Keep a cool tool.” And then, just like that, he wanders off to his drums, and leaves us standing there.
Gene laughs and shakes his head. “What a meatball.”
It makes me feel empty lots of times when I see Zipper. He’s so skinny and yellow and his eyes are always weepy-looking. They say there’s something gone wrong with his kidneys from all the gas and glue he sniffed when he was in elementary school.
Boy, he loves his drums though. Zipper’s really what you’d call dedicated. The sad thing is that the poor guy’s got no talent. He just makes a big fucking racket and he don’t know any better. You see, Zipper really thinks he’s going to make himself somebody with those drums, he really does. Who’d tell him any different?
Gene found some dirty coffee cups in the kitchen sink and started rinsing them out. While he did that I watched Nancy Williams. She hadn’t taken her coat off, in fact she was hugging it tight to her chest like she figured somebody was going to tear it off of her. I hadn’t noticed before she had on a little bit of lipstick. But now her face had gone so pale it made her mouth look bright and red and pinched like somebody had just slapped it, hard.
Zipper commenced slamming away just as the four of us got into the basement. Down there it sounded as if we were right inside a great big drum and Zipper was beating the skin directly over our heads.
And boy, did it stink in that place. Like the sewer had maybe backed up. But then there were piles of dirty laundry humped up on the floor all around an old wringer washing machine, so that could’ve been the smell too.
It was cold and sour down there and we had nothing to sit on but a couple of lawn chairs and a chesterfield that was all split and stained with what I think was you know what. Nancy looked like she wished she had a newspaper to spread out over it before she sat down. As I said before, you shouldn’t never take anybody nice to Zipper’s.
Gene poured rye into the coffee mugs he’d washed out and passed them around. Nancy didn’t want hers. “No thank you,” she told him.
“You’re embarrassing me, Nancy,” says Doreen. The way my date was sitting in the lawn chair beside me in her make-do mini I knew why Gene was all scrunched down on that wrecked chesterfield.
“You know I don’t drink, Doreen.” Let me explain that when Nancy said that it didn’t sound snotty. Just quiet and well-mannered like when a polite person passes up the parsnips. Nobody in their right minds holds it against them.
“You don’t do much, do you?” That was Gene’s two bits’ worth.
“I’ll say,” chips in Doreen.
Nancy doesn’t answer. I could hear old Zipper crashing and banging away like a madman upstairs.
“You don’t do much, do you?” Gene’s much louder this time.
“I suppose not.” I can barely hear her answer because her head’s down. She’s checking out the backs of her hands.
“Somebody in your position ought to try harder,” Doreen pipes up. “You don’t make yourself too popular when you go spoiling parties.”
Gene shoves the coffee mug at Nancy again. “Have a drink.”
She won’t take it. Principles.
“Have a drink!”
“Whyn’t you lay off her?”
Gene’s pissed off because he can’t make Nancy Williams do what he says, so he jumps off the chesterfield and starts yelling at me. “Who’s going to make me?” he hollers. “You? You going to make me?”
I can’t do nothing but get up too. I never won a fight with my brother yet, but that don’t mean I got to lay down and die for him. “You better take that sweater off,” I says, pointing, “it’s mine and I don’t want blood on it.” He always wears my clothes.
That’s when the cousin Doreen slides in between us. She’s the kind of girl loves fights. They put her centre stage. That is, if she can wriggle herself in and get involved breaking them up. Fights give her a chance to act all emotional and hysterical like she can’t stand all the violence. Because she’s so sensitive. Blessed are the peacemakers.
“Don’t fight! Please, don’t fight! Come on, Gene,” she cries, latching on to his arm, “don’t fight over her. Come away and cool down. I got to go to the bathroom. You show me where the bathroom is, Gene. Okay?”
“Don’t give me that. You can find the bathroom yourself.” Old Gene has still got his eyes fixed on me. He’s acting the role. Both of them are nuts.
“Come on, Gene, I’m scared to go upstairs with that Zipper person there! He’s so strange. I don’t know what he might get it in his head to do. Come on, take me upstairs.” Meanwhile this Doreen, who is as strong as your average sensitive ox, is sort of dragging my brother in the direction of the stairs. Him pretending he don’t really want to go and have a fuss made over him, because he’s got this strong urge to murder me or cripple me or something.
“You wait,” is all he says to me.
“Ah, quit it or I’ll die of shock,” I tell him.
“Please, Gene. That Zipper person is weird.”
At last he goes with her. I hear Gene on the stairs. “Zipper ain’t much,” he says, “I know lots of guys crazier than him.”
I look over to Nancy sitting quietly on that grungy chesterfield, feet together, hands turned palms up on her lap. Her dress kind of sticks out from under the hem of her coat all stiff and shiny and funny-looking.
“I shouldn’t have let her make me this dress,” she says, angry. “We ought to have gone downtown and bought a proper one. But she had this material.” She stops, pulls at the buttons of her coat and opens it. “Look at this thing. No wonder Gene doesn’t like it, I bet.”
At first I don’t know what to say when she looks at me like that, her face all white except for two hot spots on her cheekbones. Zipper is going nuts upstairs. He’s hot tonight. It almost sounds like something recognizable. “Don’t pay Gene any attention,” I say, “he’s a goof.”
“It’s awful, this dress.”
She isn’t that dumb. But a person needs a reason for why things go wrong. I’m not telling her she’s just a way to win ten dollars and prove a point.
“Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t drink that whiskey? Is that it?”
“Well, kind of. That’s part of it. He’s just a jerk. Take it from me, I know. Forget it.”
“I never even thought he knew I was alive. Never guessed. And here I was, crazy about him. Just crazy. I’d watch him in the hallway, you know? I traded lockers with Susan Braithwaite just to get closer to his. I went to all the hockey games to see him play. I worshipped him.”
The way she says that, well, it was too personal. Somebody oughtn’t to say that kind of a thing to a practical stranger. It was worse than if she’d climbed out of her clothes. It made me embarrassed.
“And funny thing is, all that time he really did think I was cute. He told me on the phone. But he never once thought to ask me out because I’m a Baptist. He was sure I couldn’t go. Because I’m a Baptist he thought I couldn’t go. But he thought I was cute all along.”
“Well, yeah.”
“And now,” she says, “look at this. I begged and begged Dad to let me come. I practically got down on my hands and knees. And all those dancing lessons and everything and the band doesn’t show. Imagine.”
“Gene wouldn’t have danced with you anyway. He doesn’t dance.”
Nancy smiled at me. As if I was mental. She didn’t half believe me.
“Hey,” I says, just like that, you never know what’s going to get into you, “Nancy, you want to dance?”
“Now?”
“Now. Sure. Come on. We got the one-man band, Zipper, upstairs. Why not?”
“What’ll Gene say?”
“To hell with Gene. Make him jealous.”
She was human at least. She liked the idea of Gene jealous. “Okay.”
And here I got a confession to make. I go on all the time about Gene not being able to dance. Well, me neither. But I figured what the fuck. You just hop around and hope to hell you don’t look too much like you’re having a convulsion.
Neither of us knew how to get started. We just stood gawking at one another. Upstairs Zipper was going out of his tree. It sounded like there was four of him. As musical as a bag of hammers he is.
“The natives are restless tonight, Giles,” I says. I was not uncomfortable. Let me tell you another one.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. It was just dumb.”
Nancy starts to sway from side to side, shuffling her feet. I figure that’s the signal. I hop or whatever. So does she. We’re out of the gates, off and running.
To be perfectly honest, Nancy Williams can’t dance for shit. She gets this intense look on her face like she’s counting off in her head, and starts to jerk. Which gets some pretty interesting action out of the notorious matched set but otherwise is pretty shoddy. And me? Well, I’m none too coordinated myself, so don’t go getting no mental picture of Fred Astaire or whoever.
In the end what you had was two people who can’t dance, dancing to the beat of a guy who can’t drum. Still, Zipper didn’t know no better and at the time neither did we. We were just what you’d call mad dancing fools. We danced and danced and Zipper drummed and drummed and we were all together and didn’t know it. Son of a bitch, the harder we danced the hotter and happier Nancy Williams’ face got. It just smoothed the unhappiness right out of it. Mine too, I guess.
That is, until all of a sudden it hit her. She stops dead in her tracks and asks, “Where’s Doreen and Gene?”
Good question. They’d buggered off in my old man’s car. Zipper didn’t know where.
The rest of the evening was kind of a horror story. It took me a fair while to convince Nancy they hadn’t gone for Cokes or something and would be right back. In the end she took it like a trooper. The only thing she’d say was, “That Doreen. That Doreen,” and shake her head. Of course she said it about a thousand times. I was wishing she’d shut up or maybe give us a little variety like “That Gene.” No way.
I had a problem. How to get Cinderella home before twelve-thirty, seeing as Gene had the family chariot. I tried Harvey’s Taxi but no luck. Harvey’s Taxi is one car and Harvey, and both were out driving lunches to a crew doing overtime at the mine.
Finally, at exactly twelve-thirty, we struck out on foot in this blizzard. Jesus, was it snowing. There was slush and ice water and every kind of shit and corruption all over the road. Every time some hunyak roared by us we got splattered by a sheet of cold slop. The snow melted in our hair and run down our necks and faces. By the time we went six blocks we were soaked. Nancy was the worst off because she wasn’t dressed too good with nylons and the famous dress and such. I seen I had to be a gentleman so I stopped and give her my gloves, and my scarf to tie around her head. The two of us looked like those German soldiers I seen on TV making this death march out of Russia, on that series Canada at War. That was a very educational series. It made you think of man’s inhumanity to man quite often.
“I could just die,” she kept saying. “Dad is going to kill me. This is my last dance ever. I could just die. I could just die. That Doreen. Honestly!”
When we stumbled up her street, all black because of the lack of street-lights, I could see that her house was all lit up. Bad news. I stopped her on the corner. Just then it quits snowing. That’s typical.
She stares at the house. “Dad’s waiting.”
“I guess I better go no further.”
Nancy Williams bends down and feels her dress where it sticks out from under her coat. “It’s soaked. I don’t know how much it cost a yard. I could just die.”
“Well,” I says, repeating myself like an idiot, “I guess I better go no further.” Then I try and kiss her. She sort of straight-arms me. I get the palm of my own glove in the face.
“What’re you doing?” She sounds mad.
“Well, you know -”
“I’m not your date,” she says, real offended. “I’m your brother’s date.”
“Maybe we could go out some time?”
“I won’t be going anywhere for a long time. Look at me. He’s going to kill me.”
“Well, when you do? I’m in no hurry.”
“Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand? Daddy will never let me go out with anybody named Simpson again. Ever. Not after tonight.”
“Ever?”
“I can’t imagine what you’d have to do to redeem yourself after this mess. That’s how Daddy puts it – you’ve got to redeem yourself. I don’t even know how I’m going to do it. And none of it’s my fault.”
“Yeah,” I says, “he’ll remember me. I’m the one he took the picture of.”
She didn’t seem too upset at not having me calling. “Everything is ruined,” she says. “If you only knew.”
Nancy Williams turns away from me then and goes up that dark, dark street where there’s nobody awake except at her house. Wearing my hat and gloves.
Nancy Williams sits third pew from the front, left-hand side. I sit behind her, on the other side so’s I can watch her real close. Second Sunday I was there she wore her Christmas Dance dress.
Funny thing, everything changes. At first I thought I’d start going and maybe that would redeem myself with her old man. Didn’t work. He just looks straight through me.
You ought to see her face when she sings those Baptist hymns. It gets all hot and happy-looking, exactly like it did when we were dancing together and Zipper was pounding away there up above us, where we never even saw him. When her face gets like that there’s no trouble in it, by no means.
It’s like she’s dancing then, I swear. But to what I don’t know. I try to hear it. I try and try. I listen and listen to catch it. Christ, somebody tell me. What’s she dancing to? Who’s the drummer?