DP Tool Club 12/CD_ASCQ_12_0294.iso/vrac/rune9402.zip/JOLE

Text File | 1994-02-01 | 18KB | 391 lines

JOLENE
  by Dennis Havens


   It's that God-damned Elvis Presley," the Old Man muttered. Him and
the rest of those stinking purveyors of nigger music."

   "What's that God-damned Elvis Presley?" I asked back.

   "Watch your mouth, son. Your mother's in the kitchen."

   I lit up a Pall Mall and regarded my father with some curiosity.

   "That crap -- that rotten crap they play on the radio. Civilization
is going to hell in a bucket, and does anybody care? I've got half a
mind to complain to the FCC. There ought to be standards."

   "What's got you all riled up, Dad?" I inquired. "Elvis has been
around for over a year. I'd think Little Richard or the Everly Brothers
would be the targets of your ire these days."

   "They're no better," he observed. He focused on the cigarette in
my mouth. "I'm still not used to seeing you with one of those in your
mouth. You look like a God-damned punk."

   "Some people probably think I am. We know better, though, don't we?"

   "Do we? Then what's that evil-looking Ford of yours doing out in
the driveway? If you're not a punk, why do you drag race?"

   I blew out a cloud of smoke and squinted Dad's way; something had
him pissed, and I didn't really think it was Elvis Presley or my Ford.
"I drag race because shoot-outs like they had in the Old West aren't
allowed anymore. It's the same thing, you know. Remember last Saturday
when Jack Nye showed up and challenged me? It's a point of honor. When
that happens, you've got to go do it."

   "Do you have any idea how your mother worried?" Dad said.

   "I'm nineteen. I've got to have some fun."

   "Huh. Yeah. That's for sure, isn't it?"

   "What does that mean?" I asked. I knew the man was forty-five, but
had he forgotten everything about what it was like to be young?"

   He sat down at the opposite end of the couch. "Jack Summers called
me this morning."

   I felt a sudden chill of fear, not that I could explain why. "Yeah?"
Jack Summers was my sometime-girlfriend Jolene's stepfather. What the
hell was he doing calling Dad, for Christ's sake.

   "Jolene is two months' pregnant. Were I not so outraged, I'd offer
apologies -- or a horsewhipping."

   "Dad, hold on! Jolene and I never . . . ."

   "Never? Is it the Second Coming of Jesus we've got on our hands,
then? Give it up, Pat. You got caught."

   "I didn't get caught! I swear to you, we never did it. Never."

   "Pat, there is only one way a girl gets in that condition. Now stop
denying it and start acting like a man. A married man, sooner than you
think."

   I spread my hands in supplication. "Dad, listen to me. I swear to
you. I swear to God. I never did anything more than kiss her. I never
as much as felt her boobs through her sweater. We didn't have that
kind of relationship."

   "Then would you mind explaining how she got that way?"

   "How do you know for sure she is? I've heard of girls lying to get
guys to marry them before. But that doesn't make any sense either. She
knows we never did it. It took me five dates before she'd let me French
kiss her, for God's sake. She doesn't like me that way."

   Dad got a smoke of his own going; funny, it didn't make him look
like a punk. "Your mother is crying her eyes out in the kitchen."

   "Well, she can stop. I never did it with Jolene, and that's the end
of that."

   "You're always going out with her. . . ."

   "And I always have her home before curfew. She is only seventeen,
after all. We go see a movie, get a burger and a Coke afterward, and
that leaves us maybe fifteen minutes. A few good-night kisses.
Pregnant? Jeez!"

   Mom came out of the kitchen. She dabbed at her reddened eyes with
the bib of her apron. "I believe you, son."

   "I appreciate that, but it's not going to cut any ice with Jolene's
stepfather. He's one mean son of a . . . gun."

   "How do you like Jolene?" Dad inquired.

   "I like her a lot. It's just that we don't have much physical
attraction. She's fun to be with, she's got a great sense of humor,
and she always looks good. She's pretty cool."

   Dad took a reflective hit of his Viceroy and regarded me through
the smoke. "Jack wants a meeting this afternoon."

                              *  *  *

     "I've said it before, and I'll say it again," Chuck Weaver sighed.
"1957 was meant from Day One to be a terrible year. So Jolene's knocked
up. And she named you."

   We were in Chuck's bedroom with the door shut against his bratty
little brother and his dorky parents. "I don't have a clue," I replied.

   "Come on, Pat, level with me. We've been friends since the fifth
grade. You scored once, didn't you? And that once did it."

   "No, Chuck, I never scored. I never even got close. Shit! Do you
know what this is going to do to my college education?"

   "You're not in college."

   "I was going to go, this fall. Now I can just forget that. I'll be a
husband, come June Fifteenth. A husband. Worse yet, a father. The
father of somebody else's kid."

   "Once the kid's born you can probably figure out who the real father
is. Then you can get it all straightened out."

   I flopped down moodily on the corner of Chuck's unmade bed. "Forget
it. She swears it was me. She has a whole story worked out. I was the
only guy she ever did it with, we'd only been doing it a week or so.
You believe that? The real father? What a joke! You think babies come
out looking exactly like their old man? He'll probably be a redhead,
like Jolene."

   "I warned you a long time ago that redheads are trouble. And they
have those yucky freckles. How'd you manage to get it up, fooling
around with a freckled girl? Or don't they show up in the dark?
Somehow I always figured they glowed."

   "Jerk."

   Chuck offered me a Camel; I took it, figuring the change might do
me good. "If you don't marry her the kid will be a bastard."

  "No chance of that. Her stepfather would come after me with a shotgun."

   "The kid'll technically be a bastard anyway, because you're not its
real father."

   "Yeah," I said. "And what really pisses me off is that somewhere in
this dead-ass town some guy, probably somebody I know, is laughing up
his sleeve about the whole thing."

                              *  *  *

   June Fifteenth was only a few days off. I woke up from the damndest
nightmare I'd ever had. Clammy sweat was all over my forehead and I
thought I was coming down with something fatal. She'd had the baby. It
was a nigger.

   Well, that would just about put the icing on the cake, wouldn't it?
A nigger baby. A pickaninny. I'd have to enlist in the frigging Army
and pray they sent me as far away from here as possible, somewhere on
the other side of the world. Maybe the Foreign Legion would be the way
to go. Jesus H. Christ, a nigger baby would really tear it. The
humiliation, the shame!

   I got a grip on myself. It wasn't going to be a nigger baby -- at
least I didn't think it would be. Probably some fly-boy from the nearby
air base that she sneaked out after curfew and did it with. The slut.

   That was another thing. The rest of the world might see it as two
horny kids that got caught but were pretty far down the matrimonial
road anyway, but I knew better. I knew my bride-to-be was a slut.

   Try living with that. Shit, I'd be afraid to work a night job,
wondering who might be sticking it to her in our -- my -- bed while I
was gone. A tramp. A whore. A scarlet woman. I'd be the only one who knew.

   No. She'd know. And whoever else was planking her would know.

                              *  *  *

   Funny, how we weren't encouraged to see each other. I mean, since
they'd all made up their minds that I'd gotten her pregnant, what were
they protecting her from now? This was our abbreviated-but-official
period of engagement. This was when we were really supposed to get to
know one another. But she was always home, always involved doing
something, never able to go out and even catch a movie.

   "There'll be plenty of time for that, after you're married." With
that, Jack Summers said his piece and dismissed me contemptuously from
his front door.

   To their credit, Mom and Dad found that more than a little strange.
"You'd think they would have at least invited me to discuss the
nuptials," Mom said.

   "Jack Summers is a jerk," Dad editorialized. "That wife of his --
she doesn't dare say boo without his permission. She would have been
better-off staying single after the first one left her."

   Strangest of all, I missed seeing Jolene. I liked her, after all. I
just didn't want her, pre-fertilized by a helpful stranger, as my wife.
I grew annoyed, both at Jack Summers for keeping me away and at my
parents for rolling over the way they did.

   I suppose I could understand that they'd not want to make a federal
case out of it, considering Mr. Summers was capable of getting very
unpleasant and their own moral outrage was somewhat muted in the face of
what everyone seemed to believe was incontrovertible evidence against me.

   Why did Jolene go along with it? Who was she protecting?

                              *  *  *

   "She's protecting herself, stupid."  Chuck got a Camel going and
cranked up the volume of his bedside phonograph. Frankie Lymon and
the Teenagers. Why Do Fools Fall in Love? Good question.

   "I don't quite get it. Protect herself?"

   "The guy that nailed her, if it really wasn't you. Maybe he's
someone her folks would never accept. You they can forgive in five
years or so. You're respectable. The other guy -- maybe he isn't.
Maybe he's . . . . "

   "If you say `maybe he's a nigger,' I swear to God I'll kick your
teeth down your throat."

   Chuck produced an evil, smirky grin. "A nigger. That's a thought."

   "Let's drop it, Chuck. Do you know that old bastard Summers won't
let me come visit Jolene?"

   "That's weird."

   "I think so, too. You know what I'd like to do?"

                              *  *  *

   If it's good enough for Romeo and Juliet, it's good enough for me.
Buoyed by that sentiment, secure in the maturity of my nineteen years
that no cop was going to bust me for being out after curfew, I
approached the Summers house that midnight. After all, hadn't I seen at
least one hundred war movies in my eventful young life? Didn't I know
everything there was to know about getting past the guards and rescuing
the hostages from the evil Nazis?

   Apparently I didn't know quite enough. Raisin, Jolene's nasty little
black poodle, spotted me before I got through the ratty spot in their
hedge. His furious outburst of yapping was brief; once my adrenaline
settled down and I remembered to give him the Tootsie Roll I'd stashed
in my pocket for quick energy.

   Jolene's room was on the second floor -- I guess parents wanted to
make it as hard as possible for young sex maniacs to get to their
daughters. In this case, though, there was the attached garage just a
few feet away, a cruddy old thing with a sloping roof from whose eaves
I'd swung more times than I cared to remember.

   It's a good thing I'm in shape. Hauling myself up while hanging on to
a bunch of loose shingles is a lot harder than it looks. But I made it,
Jolene's window is just a few steps away, and her light's on.

   I stretched myself as far as I dared to, using the rough wooden
molding around her widow as my support. One false step, me bucko, and
you'll be plummeting through the night to spatter your reckless young
brains all over the concrete driveway below.

   I heard sobs. Jolene's. She was crying, for God's sake! But was that
such a surprise? In something like forty-eight hours she was going to
marry somebody she liked but didn't love so her baby, fathered by
someone else, would have a name. A name other than bastard.

   Jolene was bright; she'd wanted to go to college when she finished
high school. Now she wouldn't even be able to finish high school.
Looking at the situation from her point of view, yeah, maybe she did
feel she had something to cry about.

   I will comfort her. I will come to her in her hour of need, hold her
trembling form in my strong, manly arms. I'll kiss away her tears.
Perhaps she'll be in a filmy nightgown -- after all, two months gone,
she won't even have started to show yet. Maybe she'll even be caught up
in the romantic aspects of the moment and invite me into her bed for what
is going to be the first of many, many encounters, once we're . . . .

   Have you lost your frigging mind, Pat? The whole idea is to see her
and find out why she named you, when . . . .

   The sobs turned to a whimper of pain. A shriek, almost. I craned my
neck a little more. I could see into the bedroom, just a little.

   There was Jolene, cowering on the bed. She wasn't wearing a silky
negligee -- she wasn't wearing anything!

   "Please," I heard her cry. "Please, no."

   Then I saw him. Old Man Summers. He weaved like he was drunk. I could
see his crazed eyes reflecting the light of her bedside lamp. His mouth
was half-open in a sick, sadistic grin.

   "One more," he murmured. He loosened his belt. "One more for old
times' sake, what do you say, baby?"

   "No, please, no," Jolene squealed. She started to back away, crablike.
Old Man Summers grabbed an ankle, held it tight while he forced her legs
open with his other hand. He knelt forward on the bed, his head disappear-
ing between her legs. The noises he made were enough to make me gag.

   "You like it, don't you, you little whore? Just remember, nobody can
ever know. Not ever. As far as the world's concerned, that brat you're
carrying is your boyfriend's. Your husband-to-be."  Jack Summers pulled
himself upright and worked his jeans halfway off. He was wearing no
underwear and his sexual excitement was impossible not to see.

   "And when he's off at work, when your mother's taking a nap, I just
might drop by and pay you a visit. Keep that in mind, kiddo."

   I lost my footing then. Only by grabbing the windowsill with both
hands did I avoid falling off the roof.

   "What was that?" I heard Jack Summers say.

   "I didn't hear anything," Jolene answered weakly.

                              *  *  *

   The wedding went pretty well, I thought. I wouldn't want to wear one
of those stupid tuxedos every day, but it felt kind of nice to be all
dressed up for the ceremony. Mostly I work for a tire company, but I
pick up weekend work once in a while at the Texaco station down at Main
and Fourth. A couple of dirty, sweaty jobs, actually. There are
advantages, though. At two o'clock on a Sunday morning nobody was going
to notice when I filled my tank and then pumped five gallons of Sky
Chief into a can I carry in the trunk. A crazy hot-rodder like me, he
could have lots of reasons why he'd have an extra supply on hand.

   "I know," I told Jolene right before the ceremony started. "I
understand. As far as the world will ever know, it's my kid. I'll tell
my folks I just panicked for a few days."

   Mom and Dad and that assortments of aunts and uncles I call my family
were all impressed with how loving, how considerate I was to Jolene at
the wedding and afterward.

   "I think marriage must agree with him," Mom even said to Dad. "Who
would have believed it?"

   "I guess things are no different than they were when I was growing
up," Dad observed. "A boy becomes a man when life demands it of him."

                              *  *  *

   They figure Jack Summers must have been drunk -- word was he put the
whiskey away pretty regularly. There didn't seem to be any other
explanation why he'd gotten into his car, an open container of gasoline
on the seat next to him, with a lighted cigarette in his mouth. There
was barely enough left of him to bury, people said. Jolene and I never
talked about it.

   Her mother accepted it as fate, a tragic accident. "I guess I'm just
meant to be married," she told Mom a few weeks later. Few if any tears
were shed over Jack Summers.

   Jolene had a baby girl on December eighteenth. We named her Brenda
Marie.

   Six months later she was pregnant again, and there was no doubt in my
mind who the father was this time. That's why we named him Pat Junior.

   That was a lot of years ago. We're still married.

   Funny, how things work out sometimes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1994 Dennis M. Havens
=========================     #  #  #    =============================
Dennis Havens was born in New York and raised in Las Vegas, where
for many years he worked as a musician in showroom orchestras and
lounge groups. He also toured for two years as a singer with The
Modernaires.  He wrote his first novel in 1973 and has completed
twelve more, with four currently in various stages of construction.
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