Manly Virtues

A Novel
by

Hal Jones

Copyright, 2006
H.V. Jones

Berge Demolition Co.
Reno, Nevada
Norman Berge, Owner

Internal Memo
6/26/2003

Dear Norm,

Just to let you know - demolition of the remaining cabins at Breezeswept Point on Tahoe has been completed. Altogether, 26 cabins were removed. All were empty except for #68. That cabin was still full of stuff. Before demolition, we took out living room and bedroom furniture, a stove and refrigerator, dishes and kitchen utensils, rugs, bedding, linens, some clothes, a radio, an old tape recorder and a box of recorded tapes and lots of old magazines. I kept an inventory of it all, and I have it at a mini-storage in Stateline.
I know all owners were notified to remove their goods, but you know how people squawk when their “treasures” are messed with. Let me know what to do with these things.

Jack Ketchum,
Foreman



Reply:
7/1/2003

Jack,

Thanks for letting me know about progress at Breezeswept and thanks for taking care of the things from Cabin 68. For two years we’ve notified the former cabin lease-holders that all leases expired in 2000 and that the grounds would be cleared this year for development, but some were slow getting the message or didn’t want to hear it. Some families have had those cabins for sixty or seventy years and are very pissed about losing them. They’d love to get someone into a lawsuit for whatever reason.
The former owner of #68 was the hardest to contact, but I finally received a letter from him last week stating that he had no interest in anything left in that cabin. He said to give it all to charity.
There’s a used furniture dealer in Stateline who might buy the furniture and appliances. Anything he doesn’t want can given to some church or trashed. Don’t enter any receipts on the books. Donate anything you receive to your favorite charity (the crew beer fund sounds like a good one).

Norm

Repliforms 2243

TAPE ONE 5/21/85

Come in...come in... testing...testing...
This is about...this is about... Hell! The damn thing's not working. The little needle won't go up. Tape's turning, but I bet it's not recording a damn thing. Stupid idea, anyway. Tell your life to a fuckin' machine. Well, no one else's listening. Better the ol’ Wollensak recorder here than nothing...if the damn thing worked. There. It's recording again. Just proves the old maxim: if at first you don't succeed, kick shit out of it.
Now, let’s see...I guess this is what you’d call an audio journal. I got this friend who writes things down at the end of each day and says its really useful for getting a fix on your life, to see where you’re goin’ and all. Well, I’ve never done that, and I’m not about to write out forty-five years of my bullshit life. But maybe I can talk it all out to Dr. Wollensak here and get some sense out of what’s goin’ on - or not goin’ on. Well, that’s the idea, anyway.
So let's see, Wolly, this is about...about sex. No. I’ve been thinking a lot about rooms lately. Maybe it's about rooms...rooms with walls that are really doors, or rooms with walls that become gardens. No. It’s about rooms that are cameras. Camera means room, doesn’t it - in Italian or something. I remember a room that was a camera, where unbelievable things came into view. Oh shit, I can see this is really goin’ well. But maybe what I’m really thinking about is boxes.
Marlene used to talk about putting people in boxes. She said I shouldn't judge Leo, shouldn't put him in a box. Those were her words, I remember. But why should all that be coming up now? I had it all packed away. What the hell good's a memory, anyway, if it's not to keep stuff like that boxed up and stored away where it can't give trouble? But now everything seems to be leaking out.
I've gotta get control of this. There's gotta be a plan. Well, let's start with the sex. It's no lie that sex has a lot to do with it. There's no need to be afraid of that. I mean, it's not like I've lived my life ashamed of sex. I guess you could say I've even got a little reputation along those lines, although that may be due for a helluva comedown if things go on the way they have lately. And I'm not sure if nature's the one that's screwing around or if my own mind is doing me in. I mean, that mental thing has always been a little scary for me, and I'd just like to get things straight. Yeah, getting it straight is really the whole problem.
Well, shit, there's no need to play word games here. The point of all this is total frankness for a change - get it all straightened out...I mean clear. Well, what the hell's the problem? You’re just a tape recorder, right Wolly? What can happen? Sure, right, I know - go ask Nixon.
So, frankly speaking, the real problem here - at least the one that's messing me up now - is straightness. Or the fact that lately I can't get it straight. I've always needed sex a lot, and now the main tool is shot to hell, I mean, last night's spaghetti has better form. I've seen harder flounders. In a word: raging impotence.
I suppose a lot of people would say so what, it happens in any marriage; maybe it's just stress. Well it's not just with my wife, to tell the truth, and of course it's stress, but sex is how I've always handled that.
And then there's Marlene - and in my own bed - and with my wife right there. It happened about a week ago. As usual, I was getting to bed about one o'clock. It's gotten so I work or watch TV late almost every night thinking - hoping - my wife'll be asleep by the time I go to bed. That night she was waiting. It wasn't anything nasty. She was acting very pleasant and all, but you only know if you start with excuses that you'll get something like: "It's alright, honey. We can try tomorrow. I'm fine." And then a little later: "Well, you know a woman has needs,too. I guess I'm not as young and attractive as I used to be." And later: "Is there somebody new at work?" "Y'know Sylvia says sex is even better for her and Sam now that they're in their forties." It could go on until morning.
Rather than face all that, I gave it a try, only knowing what would happen, searching around like crazy for some way out: wear her down with tongue tricks, tie on a splint, use a starched rubber. And then hearing a little laugh, turning to see Marlene sitting cross-legged on the bed right next to us. I almost reached out to her, but I knew better.
She had nothing on. Her skin glowed bronze, like it was then. Her thick hair was loose over her shoulders. The moonlight slanting through the window fell across her breasts like it did that night.
It shocked me so much that I sat right up and jumped back to the end of the bed. Still she sat there with her mocking smile, waiting to judge my next move. It was a vision, I knew, but I hadn't had one for years. It scared me, but there was excitement too, especially when I glanced at the dresser mirror and saw this tall skinny kid looking back, and I could see that he - I - had a good hardon.
At least that part wasn't in my mind. When I looked down, it really was there, and I didn't lose much time getting it into my wife. She seemed surprised as hell, especially at my energy, but I was inspired for the first time in months. I really wasn't sure what was going on. Half the time it seemed like Marlene was under me. The rest of the time she was sitting next to us, like criticizing my technique after all those years. It didn't take long to finish, but my wife was happy enough. When I looked around, though, Marlene was gone.
I've thought about all that a lot the last few days. I've used sex a lot to keep my head under control all these years, but now maybe nature is turning the tables. If the price of potency is having visions, I'm not willing to pay it. That's why I've got to figure out what the hell is going on. That's why I've got to talk it all through. And I guess the place to start is with Marlene.

I first saw Marlene in 1955 during enrollment week of my sophomore year in high school. I remember it was the first day - when different groups had gathered in front of the school before the bell. The group I was with were all just entering high school. Although for three years we had gone to Toll Junior High across the street and had even had some of our classes in the high school buildings, it was something else to suddenly be high school students. The year before we were the biggest kids in our school, and now watching all the juniors and seniors arriving in their hot cars and letterman jackets made you feel a little sick. We grouped together for some kind of protection, although, of course, no one would admit to being nervous.
I really only knew two kids in the group I joined near the flagpole. One was Al Bates who was my best friend - my only friend - and the other was Billy Finley, Al's cousin and a total asshole. Making friends was as easy for Al as it was hard for me. The rest of the guys were kids he knew through sports or from just living there all his life. They all joked together in a strained way, generally ignoring me.
When the first bell rang we moved together toward the main doors of the school. It was then that we spotted Marlene, although it wasn't like you could miss her. It would be like missing a car accident when you were in it.
She was standing at the top of the steps, just to the left of the main door. It was obvious she was a "tough" girl, although not a tough girl from our area. Like the kids from the Catholic school - like all of us, I guess, the local tough girls had their uniform. They always wore long black skirts with white sweaters and black scarves tied around their necks. Usually they had on their boyfriends' leather jackets. Marlene's clothes were very tight and very bright. She had on a red satin jacket over a pink sweater and very tight red pants. They showed off a good body and long legs accented even more by red high heels. I understood that later in the day she got sent home for the pants and high heels. Her eyes were greeny-gold, but that was the only thing on her face she hadn't covered with about a ton of makeup, so it was a little hard to tell what her face really looked like.
Right away a lot of whispering passed around the group, but because it was our first day, no one dared to say anything - no one but Finley, that is. He was a tall, skinny kid with dark red hair and freckles, an opinion on everything, and a mouth like an air raid siren.
"Whooee," he almost screamed as we crossed by her, "hot meat for lunch."
There were some suppressed giggles.
"Hey, kid," she called, "you've got long legs."
"Long enough to go around you a couple of times.'' The rest of the guys broke up over that.
"I bet those legs put your asshole a good four feet off the ground," she continued casually. "I could tell right off that you were one of this school's outstanding assholes."
That stopped everyone. All of us cracked up while Finley turned purple. Al had to hold him back as he dissolved into a screaming, babbling fool. Marlene very cooly turned and went into the school. For only an instant, though, her eyes landed on me, and, for some reason, I smiled at her. She didn't seem to notice.
Why I should react to her in any way was beyond me at the time. Although she was different, she was obviously tough, and I didn't hang around with tough kids. Tough guys could beat shit out of me, and tough girls hung around with tough guys who could beat shit out of me. There was something else that set us apart. Tough kids were supposed to know about sex, and, while we all wanted to know, there was something frightening about that, too.
Marlene made me drop my guard a little. Maybe it was her accurate analysis of Finley's character, or maybe it was something in her eyes. Whatever it was, both of us shook it off at the moment and went on about the problems of a new school.
Any school was a problem for me at that age. Studying was not a problem. I never had much trouble making grades, except in social studies which was boring as hell. It was the things that went on around school that caused problems for me. I was what you would call nothing much socially, and the stupid thing was that the only thing I wanted that particular year was to be popular. It wasn't like a goose wanting to be a swan kind of stuff. I wasn't ugly, or cross-eyed, or spastic, or anything like that. The handicaps that I had were in my head, mostly, but while I was sure that popularity would solve everything that was bothering me, I had no idea how to go about it. In a word, I was strange.
Mostly I was very quiet. Kids who signed my yearbook that year put things like "Great Stone Face" or "Tall silent type." Not many kids signed my book, anyway. I didn't talk much because I was afraid kids would twist around what I said and use it to make fun of me. It was safer just to keep quiet.
I hadn't been like that when I was a lkid. Then we lived in northern California, and it seemed like people were friendlier, or maybe it was just that I was a little kid up there. People like little kids more than teenagers.
I still didn’t know why we moved from there. My grandfather, who was a minister in a church in San Jose, retired, and then he got an offer to help with a church in Pasadena. For some reason he took it, although he was sort of tired and sick by then. My mother told him he shouldn't, but I think she was a little glad when he took it anyway. She wasn't so glad when my father, who had a building contracting business that was doing OK, began to talk about moving to LA, too. That worried me, I remember, but what can a little kid say? Within a year we were there. I was eight. My grandfather died when I was nine. My father died two year after that.
How can you be popular? I analyzed it. It would feel so good if everyone just liked you. If they invited you to all the good places. If they smiled with you and not at you. You could feel all close and warm instead of what I felt. I thought about it a lot that year, but I didn't figure out much. Did you have to be rich? It didn't hurt, but it was no guarantee. Did you have to be smart? If you were, you'd better pretend you weren't. Did you have to be tough? Either that or be fast, but being a wimp was a disaster. Did you have to be out for sports? Probably. Did you need an "attitude"? They all seemed to have it, but how did you get it?
After my father died, my mother went nuts. She sold everything - his business, his tools, the house in L.A. She gave away his clothes. It was almost like she knew it was going to happen and had it all planned out. She got a job in a bank and with her inheritence from Grandpa bought a house in Glendale, although why the hell there, I never knew. I guess because that was where the bank was.
I went to movies a lot. My mother didn't care much. She was on her way up. Our conversations usually consisted of her bitching and me listening. She bitched mostly about money or mortgage payments, or how little my father left, including a cheapo insurance policy. That was bullshit. They were just reasons for her doing what she wanted to do anyway.
She started at the bank as a teller, but pretty soon she was taking courses in banking law, or business economics, or God knew what. She was just trying to get whatever edge it took for a woman to scratch a little higher in those days. Finally, she knew so much about so many things - or so many people - that she got an executive position, which was a little amazing for that conservative old local bank. Either she was damn good or she knew some damn good secrets. When the bank was taken over by a more aggressive state bank she was on her way.
I mostly liked swashbuckler movies, or ones about knights and castles. I spent a lot of time during those years in the library, too, if I wasn't at the movies. I looked up medieval stories or found out about heraldry. I began to live the life. I even designed a Thomas family coat of arms. I made up a lot of mystical stories about places I saw every day and there were special names for the routes I followed.
The schools - like our house - were right at the base of the foothills, just above a long valley that stretched east to L.A. and west to San Fernando. From my house to the high school there were three ways I could go. The lowest, across Stocker Street was the fastest, but also the most boring. It was straight and went through a drab shopping area. The houses were all pretty much the same: wooden California bungalows - a kind of evolved shantyhouse - or shapeless apartment buildings. This I called the Bog and Gully Route.
A little farther up the hillside lay another path. There was no street that made it all the way across, but by jogging up and down you could get there. This way took longer, but it was more interesting. The houses were a little larger and set farther apart. Here and there were some with good designs. The owners probably had a little more money there, and some of them were remodeling, which really caught my interest. A lot of the houses were the typical fake Spanish stuff that everyone built in the thirties, I guess, but I remember one apartment over by Central Avenue that was designed to look like a group of English cottages on a hillside, rather than just one building, which it was. This was the Shining Hill Path.
The Golden Dome Trail was the highest one of all, and I usually didn't take it unless I had a lot of time to kill or later when I began to run a lot. This was the most interesting, though. The houses, some of them at least, were great. While many looked expensive, but ordinary, a lot were individually designed by architects. There were colonial mansions and plantation houses, Spanish haciendas with great rambling designs, and big Tudor halls.
If you know southern California, you know that if you have the coins you live on a hillside - for a better view of the smog, I guess, or to look down on the neighbors. Most of the kids who were rich and popular lived above the school in the saddles and canyons of the Verdugo range. By the 1950's even some of the higher canyons - which had been left for poison oak and coyotes - were being bulldozed and graded for fancy houses. My mother couldn't push up that far, but you could tell she wanted to.
I began to get interested in houses. That was natural, I guess, my father being an architectural engineer, sort of. When I went to the library I began to take out books on architecture and to notice and make drawings of the different styles of houses that were popular around southern California and then styles from around the country and from around the world. I could tell you what houses were Victorian or split ranch or saltbox. But, in fact, I never told anybody. I mean, these are really not the things of your typical teenagers talk about, after all. You can see why I just kept my mouth shut.
About the only reason I hadn't become a total loner by high school was Al Bates. Toward the end of ninth grade, once when I was walking the Bog and Gully route home, he passed me on his bicycle. About a block away he doubled back, circled around me and screech-stopped in my path. He almost ran into me.
I'd seen him around school. He seemed to go his own way, didn't hang around with any particular group. He was about my size, but stronger looking, with a mop of curly, sandy hair. I thought he might be looking for trouble, but instead he started off talking about something at school like we'd known each other for a long time. I noticed later that this was the way he started up with anyone he felt worth talking to. The funny thing was that I answered him right back, which was little strange for me. It was like there was no barrier between us, and I had this terrific need for conversation. After that we spent a lot of afternoons and weekends together if his family didn't have something he had to do.
Anyway, getting back to Marlene, which all of this was supposed to be about in the first place, around the second week of high school, I got out of cross country practice a little late one day, and there was no one around to hitch a ride from. There was never much chance of a ride anyway, because most of the guys on the cross country team were nerds who couldn't drive or whose parents wouldn't let them have a car even in they could drive.
This particular day I walked the Shining Hill path along the edge of the hills. I ended up on Randolph Street, which was a way I didn't usually go, although it came out close to our house. I was surprised that the houses on one particular section of the street were all pretty nice - even what you would call stately - with wide, sloped lawns, some circular drives, large shade trees and plenty of rose and camellia gardens.
I was busy taking all this in and making a lot of mental notes about the places when, in the distance, I spotted a girl who appeared to be Marlene. Someone in a black car dropped her off, and she stood for a while watching the car drive away, then turned and walked up the long walk to a big house and went in. I wasn't sure, but it sure seemed like her.
I walked faster to see if I could get a good look, but by the time I reached the house no one was to be seen. The curtains downstairs were drawn, and no one was visible upstairs. Anyway, I didn't look too hard. I tried to seem casual. I didn't really know why I was so interested. What difference did it make who it was that went into that house? I just told myself that it couldn't be her. According to the way we all assumed things to be, this wasn't the area of town where you would expect a tough girl to live. More likely she lived in the low rent area across Glenoaks Road over by the industrial section. If it really was her, maybe she was in the neighborhood on some nasty business.
Then I took a good look at the house. It was really something. I don't know why I'd never noticed it in my wanderings. It wasn't new - maybe from the 1920s - but it had the kind of lines that always look good. I swear it looked exactly like a house I'd seen pictured in a book about the work of Frank Lloyd Wright - one called "Falling Water" or something - that was built somewhere back east. I remembered reading in that book that he had also designed houses in Pasadena. Maybe he'd sneaked in one in Glendale that no one knew about. Or maybe it was just a damn good copy.
The front was all heavy wood siding and really beautiful stone work. A broad, low gabled roof faced the street, and a cantilevered stone-covered balcony on the second floor ran from the middle of the house around the east side.
Like I said, I wanted to look casual about it, so I kept on moving, taking in what I could with little back glances. Then, as I reached Jackson Street and turned down to our house, the stupidity of what I was into really hit me. Why should I give a damn who it was that went into that house? And if it really was Marlene, why should I want anything to do with her anyway? No one thought of me as any kind of tough guy, but so far nothing had happened to label me a wimp either. The surest way to change that was to come up against the leather jacket boys that Marlene hung around with during lunch, not that I really paid attention to what she did at lunch, of course.
This whole fighting thing was a little strange. Kids in elementary school never got in many fights, but somewhere around eighth or ninth grade some guys just seemed to turn nasty. Hormonal, I guess. Two guys I knew got drawn into fights like that, got popped in the nose, gave up and went through a lot of shit later. It seemed like this was a kind of sorting out that had to be done, but if you could avoid it you could avoid the label at least for a while. To hang around a tough girl was to bring that day of reckoning closer. And for what? Why was I even interested?
OK. Interested was not the word. Unconsciously, it'd become obsessive. I didn't even realize that I knew her class schedule completely, that I shadowed her, at a distance, from class to class, that, if there was a chance to eat lunch away from my friends and not draw comments, I tried to sit near her table.
She usually ate alone. She hadn't been in school long enough to be in any group, and she seemed to prefer it that way. But sometimes leather jacket guys and upperclass-men with reputations as cocksmen would sit down by her, and I would find myself burning for some reason.
After seeing the girl go into that house, I began to realize what I'd been doing. Instead of stopping it, though, I started watching her even more, cursing myself for an idiot all the while. What I was after, what I would do if I ever had a chance, were beyond my comprehension.
For her part, if she was aware of me at all, she ignored me completely. Even when I dared to sit a few chairs from her one day in the library, not a glance passed between us for the full hour, although, if she'd looked, she would certainly have caught me watching her.
I took her all in. Her outfits had gotten a little more subdued since the first day. They were at least within the range that wouldn't get her thrown out again, but they didn't leave very much to imagination. Her sweaters were revealing as hell and her skirts tighter and shorter than the floor-moppers that were popular then, reaching just below the legal knee. Her hair was ratted up and her face hidden completely behind paint and lipstick. The face, the hair, the style were forbidding as hell to me, but the body - my God - the body hypnotized me.
Now I even began to avoid getting rides home so that I could walk the middle route on the chance that I might see her again, but after a couple of weeks with no luck I was sure that I'd been wrong that afternoon.
All this was about the same time that I was getting seriously into cross country, a true indication of a self-destructive personality, if ever there was one. I'd messed around with running in ninth grade, mainly because Al was into that, and in the first weeks of high school the new track coach, Mr. Sosky, sniffed me out because he'd heard that I'd run in junior high. He was desperate to get a cross country team started. I was pretty tall and for your typical long distance runner, but, like I said, he was desperate.
Practice meant that I didn't get out until around four-thirty or five, and as September wore on and evenings darkened earlier it was easier to see into lit houses and less easy for residents to observe me watching. I became bolder about looking into what I called "Marlene's house;" but while there was sometimes a light here or there, the drapes and shades were always drawn.
Then one afternoon it happened. We got out of practice early because of a meet the next day, and, as I passed under the big old jacaranda trees that lined her parkway, suddenly there she was in the large, arched front window, holding back one drape as she watched the street. My reaction still surprises me, considering how shy I was at that time. As though having spotted my long-lost best friend, I raised my hand and waved.
Taken off guard, Marlene began to wave back. Then, realizing that she didn't know this little jerk from the trash man, she canceled the wave and settled on a condescending kind of smile. It was the first time I saw her smile. My obsession was confirmed. I was really excited. But as I turned the corner and headed down the hill, the thrill gradually cooled into a consideration of what was next. If tough kids meant fighting and sex - as we all knew to be true - it wasn't for a fight that I was following Marlene, but what the hell did I know about the other thing?
Up to that point, my sexual experience had been pretty much out of hand, as they say. My only serious date was Rosey Palm. The summer before high school I'd worked at a mountain camp where they had church conferences, and I sort of dated one of the girls on the crew. Actually the situation was that because I was the youngest one, all the older guys on the crew got lined up with the cuter crew girls, and I got left with one who was a little hefty in the haunches and not so pretty, but with a “great personality,” always a description to beware of. She was a good talker, and we did a lot of that. The only romance involved was when she gave me a peck on the cheek at the end of the summer.
I kept up the watch on Marlene's house, but without luck. At school, I never caught her in some situation where we might start up a conversation. Then one day in October I passed her house to find her sitting on the front steps. At first I hardly recognized her. She had on a grey sweatshirt and dark blue shorts. Her hair wasn't teased, and her face was scrubbed. Although caught off guard, I knew my way. I made a casual right turn, right up the front walk and stood in front of her. My boldness didn't surprise me anymore.
"Hi, I'm Andy Thomas," I began. "You're new in this neighborhood, aren't you? We live just down the street."
"Hi," she said a little guardedly, "I see you go by here all the time. Why did you wave the other day?"
"Just trying to be friendly. I've seen you at school sometimes."
"I've seen you seeing me at school. Why don't you say anything to me there?"
"I don't know. Didn't think you wanted to talk much. Anyway, I just thought I'd say hi. Do you like it here?”
"Not much." Her tone was dry.
"We moved this summer," she went on. "I don't know why my father had to pick a house in this neighborhood. Wants to keep me out of trouble, I guess."
'Where are you from?"
"Philadelphia."
"I've never seen Philadelphia. Well, I've never been east of Nevada. But you're right about the neighborhood. It's dead. Mostly old ladies and cats.
She laughed. The second smile. But I didn't know where to go from there.
"Well, I hope things get better for you. There's not a lot to do around here, but it's not too bad. I guess I have to get home."
"Well, thanks for saying hello. That was nice."
"Bye."
"Bye.”
This time as I headed down the hill my attitude was changed completely. The thrill of the game I was playing had suddenly become something that hung heavily in the air and wrapped itself around me. A very serious thing was coming. I recognized the feeling. It had happened once before. I walked on, lost in thoughts. The world had changed in five minutes. For the first time I'd really seen Marlene Barzani. She was beautiful.

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