swing, man, and I do mean swing.”
I’d never thought of asking Kenny for actual hard information. I’d never suspected Kenny of having any hard information. But maybe Mom was right. Maybe before he’d taken up marijuana, cheap wine, and Zen there had been an actual fact or two rolling around inside his mind.
“He looks so silly in that goatee,” Mom said. “But he’s still a nice boy.”
Dad laughed. “Don’t tell that to Emily at the rectory. She thinks he should be put in jail for writing those dirty books.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She also was going to start a petition to put D. H. Lawrence in jail until she found out he was dead.”
Summer Saturday mornings in Black
River Falls are a good time to be on the streets. The merchants are happy because
business is good; the farm wives are happy because they’re getting their hair done or buying something new for themselves—it could be a dress or an electric mixer, it doesn’t matter, it’s just the idea of getting something new; the little ones are happy because there’s a triple feature plus a chapter of a serial at the Rialto; the teenage girls are happy because they’ll be modeling their swimsuits at the public pool; and the teenage boys are happy because they’ll get to watch the teenage girls model those swimsuits.
The street rods are out already. They’ll go out to the park where the boys will polish them the way pagans used to polish false idols. Chopped and channeled hymns of metal and fiberglass and rubber that wouldn’t think of playing Fabian or Frankie Avalon or anybody like that, sticking strictly to Mr. Chuck Berry and Mr. Little Richard and Mr. Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps. There are also “jes’ folks” kinds of cars, bicycles, a horse-drawn Amish buggy or two (there’s an Amish community twenty miles due east of here), and a whole bunch of motorcycles, most of the riders being Marlon Brando in their minds (but then who do the grandmas riding the big Indians imagine themselves to be?).
Kenny Thibodeau made it easy for me. He was sitting in the town square reading a John Steinbeck paperback, In Dubious
Battle.
His black uniform was intact. Even his shades were black. The only way I knew he saw me was the way he tilted his head up at me.
“Hey, man.”
“Hey, man, yourself, Kenny.”
I sat down next to him on the bench.
“How they hangin’, man?”
“Oh, you know,” I said. I’ve never known how to answer that particular clich@e. They’re hangin’
low, hangin’ high? Which way is best? “How’s the writing going?”
“Pretty good. They jumped me up in advances.”
Two paperbacks rested on the pigeon-blessed bench between us.
“Take ‘em, I was gonna give ‘em to you anyway when I ran into you.”
I picked them up. The covers were nicely illustrated. One showed a virginal young
blonde woman in a matching skirt and sweater and bobby sox and penny loafers staring over her shoulder at a severe but coldly beautiful older woman standing in a shadowed doorway. “Student Advisor … Lesbos ruled this campus until a stud professor was hired.” The other one featured a well-built shirtless young girl in bed with a nearly naked older woman. “Sex Machine … His “tools of the trade” could turn lesbos into man-lovers.”
“The Nobel Committee wants every copy of those they can find,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he laughed, “so they can burn ‘em.”
“You ever actually meet a lesbian?”
“I heard one on the radio once.”
“How do you know she was a lesbian?”
“She said she was.”
“I guess that’s one way of telling.” Then I said, “My cousin’s a lesbian and she’s actually very nice. I mean, nobody in the family wants to acknowledge it but she never even pretends to be interested in guys romantically.”
“Maybe you could introduce me to her sometime.
You know, maybe she could teach me how they talk, code words, stuff like that.”
“I think they talk pretty
I’d never thought of asking Kenny for actual hard information. I’d never suspected Kenny of having any hard information. But maybe Mom was right. Maybe before he’d taken up marijuana, cheap wine, and Zen there had been an actual fact or two rolling around inside his mind.
“He looks so silly in that goatee,” Mom said. “But he’s still a nice boy.”
Dad laughed. “Don’t tell that to Emily at the rectory. She thinks he should be put in jail for writing those dirty books.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She also was going to start a petition to put D. H. Lawrence in jail until she found out he was dead.”
Summer Saturday mornings in Black
River Falls are a good time to be on the streets. The merchants are happy because
business is good; the farm wives are happy because they’re getting their hair done or buying something new for themselves—it could be a dress or an electric mixer, it doesn’t matter, it’s just the idea of getting something new; the little ones are happy because there’s a triple feature plus a chapter of a serial at the Rialto; the teenage girls are happy because they’ll be modeling their swimsuits at the public pool; and the teenage boys are happy because they’ll get to watch the teenage girls model those swimsuits.
The street rods are out already. They’ll go out to the park where the boys will polish them the way pagans used to polish false idols. Chopped and channeled hymns of metal and fiberglass and rubber that wouldn’t think of playing Fabian or Frankie Avalon or anybody like that, sticking strictly to Mr. Chuck Berry and Mr. Little Richard and Mr. Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps. There are also “jes’ folks” kinds of cars, bicycles, a horse-drawn Amish buggy or two (there’s an Amish community twenty miles due east of here), and a whole bunch of motorcycles, most of the riders being Marlon Brando in their minds (but then who do the grandmas riding the big Indians imagine themselves to be?).
Kenny Thibodeau made it easy for me. He was sitting in the town square reading a John Steinbeck paperback, In Dubious
Battle.
His black uniform was intact. Even his shades were black. The only way I knew he saw me was the way he tilted his head up at me.
“Hey, man.”
“Hey, man, yourself, Kenny.”
I sat down next to him on the bench.
“How they hangin’, man?”
“Oh, you know,” I said. I’ve never known how to answer that particular clich@e. They’re hangin’
low, hangin’ high? Which way is best? “How’s the writing going?”
“Pretty good. They jumped me up in advances.”
Two paperbacks rested on the pigeon-blessed bench between us.
“Take ‘em, I was gonna give ‘em to you anyway when I ran into you.”
I picked them up. The covers were nicely illustrated. One showed a virginal young
blonde woman in a matching skirt and sweater and bobby sox and penny loafers staring over her shoulder at a severe but coldly beautiful older woman standing in a shadowed doorway. “Student Advisor … Lesbos ruled this campus until a stud professor was hired.” The other one featured a well-built shirtless young girl in bed with a nearly naked older woman. “Sex Machine … His “tools of the trade” could turn lesbos into man-lovers.”
“The Nobel Committee wants every copy of those they can find,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he laughed, “so they can burn ‘em.”
“You ever actually meet a lesbian?”
“I heard one on the radio once.”
“How do you know she was a lesbian?”
“She said she was.”
“I guess that’s one way of telling.” Then I said, “My cousin’s a lesbian and she’s actually very nice. I mean, nobody in the family wants to acknowledge it but she never even pretends to be interested in guys romantically.”
“Maybe you could introduce me to her sometime.
You know, maybe she could teach me how they talk, code words, stuff like that.”
“I think they talk pretty
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