TAPE FOURTEEN 4/1/86

When I got to Glendale, no one was at the bus station. I guess Frank had called my mother, but it didn't surprise me much that she wasn't there. I'd never called a taxi before, so I just carried my stuff the mile or so to the house. The key was in its usual place, and there was food. And that was about how it was the rest of the time I lived there. There was a roof and a bed and food if I cooked it. Anything else I needed I had to ask for or get for myself. I never asked for anything.
Going back to school was strange. You know how, when you go back to a place after a long time, you expect it to be the same? I guess schools don't change much, but it really did seem like I'd gone back a year in time. Kids were still standing around the flagpole before the first bell, and there was my old group by the front door, plus or minus a few. I almost expected Marlene to come out the door any minute in her red pants.
But it wasn't the same. It wasn't the first day of school, for one thing. It was almost the end of October. And this time as I approached the group, I wasn't ignored. They made such a deal of it, it was almost stupid. At first they didn't recognize me. Helen's food had gotten me big again, and I guess my face had changed a lot. Everyone had some question or comment, but you could see that they were mostly amazed as hell. Al was there, but we couldn't say much. Finally, the bell rang, but that kind of reaction continued all day, and from a lot of kids I hardly knew.
It turned out that Marlene was there, after all, at least in a way. Almost everyone who talked to me brought her up. A lot of them thought we'd run away together. It seemed that her big appearance at the prom was still being chewed over. A lot of guys had this conspiratorial look, like I was really clever to figure out what a babe she was. And you knew they were aching to ask more.
I just said she was going to art school in Philadelphia and that I'd lived for a while with my relatives in the mountains. They could believe what they wanted - and they did.
Then about a week later Marlene came up again. We were eating lunch, and someone said something about Pop-tarts for breakfast. Right away asshole Billy Finley mouthed off that I preferred to eat wop-tarts.
My fist just launched itself and pulled me after it across the lunch table and all over Finley. After they got us apart I was suspended again for a week, and Finley was missing a tooth which they never found. I guess he swallowed it.
A couple of days later I was lying in the back yard, catching some sun and reading when I heard the gate open. It was Al. I was really glad to see him. There was a lot that I wanted to talk to someone about, and he'd always been my best friend. He'd been working so much I'd hardly seen him since I got back, but right off I could sense something different about him.
He said hi and then got right into what was on his mind before I could say anything.
"Look, my aunt asked me if I'd talk to you."
"Your aunt?"
"Yeah, it seems like someone's going after Billy and her pretty hard. They took a shot through his bedroom window, and the next day the tires on her car were slit."
"And you think I'm doing that shit?"
"Nah, nah, it's nothing like that. I already found out it's Leo Frank or some of his buddies. I just wondered if you'd say something to him. Kids say you know him pretty well."
"Know him pretty well?"
"Well they say you double dated with him to the prom last year and that he was dating that girl before you did."
"Man, Al, I don't know what they had going, but there's no way he and I are friends. I don't even know where he lives."
"Well, that's another thing. He always hangs around that pool hall where your brother works."
We talked a while more, and Al tried to put a good face on it. You could tell he didn't like to be asking me for things. It wasn't at all like it used to be between us. In the end I said I'd try to do something if I could.
I told Dan about it, and he called the next afternoon to say that Leo was at the pool hall. I went over and found him there shooting eight ball by himself. No one else was there except Dan who waved to me from behind the bar. I walked over to the pool table.
"Hi, Leo."
"Hey, little Thomas. Whadaya say? I haven't seen you around in a while. Of course, I don't run in those circles lately. Whatcha been doing?"
"Oh, not much. The usual. I was up north for a few months, and you know how school is."
"I can't say I spend much time thinking about it."
"What've you been doing now that you're out of it?"
I thought about asking him if he was going to college, but that would be rubbing his nose in it too much. After all, I'd come to ask something from him.
"Oh, I'm just what you'd call hanging around between things. I do little jobs here and there."
Yeah, like terrorizing kids and slitting ladies' tires.
"You want to shoot a game?" he asked. "Don't tell me you shoot like your brother."
"No, I've never practiced too much. I'm really not too hot at it."
"Well, then what brings you to this lovely establishment? I can't say I've seen you around here much. Just come to say hello to your brother?"
"No, actually, I was looking for you."
Tenseness was breaking my voice, so I just got right to the point.
"It's about Billy Finley. That is, someone in his family thinks I asked you to give him some trouble, and they came to me to ask you to stop. I told them I didn't tell you what to do, but they asked me anyway."
"You're damn right you don't tell me what to do. No one tells me what to do. You hear that?"
"Yeah, Leo, right. That's what I told them."
"What's this 'them?' You mean Finley's cousin, Al Bates, don't you? He's your big buddy, isn't he?"
"Well, yeah, Al did say something to me."
"Well, why doesn't he come to me then? I know him."
"It's got to do with this fight Finley and I had. I got suspended, and Al came by and brought it up. It sort of pissed me off, too, that he'd come to me, but I said I'd talk to you. It's Finley's mother, really. She's having nervous attacks and calling the cops and all."
I said the word "cops" pretty pointedly.
"So you came here to threaten me with the cops?"
"No, no. Me threaten you? No way. But, I mean, if you were giving Finley trouble on my account - I mean as a favor to me - it really isn't necessary. He's an asshole, but he's mostly all mouth. I think he'll knock it off now, after all this."
At that Leo really heated up.
"And who the hell d'ya think you are? As a favor to you? I'm not saying I'm doin' anything to anybody, but if something unfortunate happened to this particular little shithead, it wouldn't have a goddam fuckin' thing to do with you. Someone says something to you, and you come running down here like you're pulling my strings. Like some angel of mercy come to straighten me out. Well, I'll tell you, buddy, this is my thing, and if I'm doing something it's because you haven't got the guts to do it for yourself."
"Do what for myself?"
"You should have killed the little shit for what he said. Or at least left him so he wouldn't talk again, or walk again or something so that he'd know what it is to take people's names in vain. Her name should never be fouled by his mouth. When I get done, it won't ever be again."
Leo's force really caught me off guard. Even Danny looked over to see what was going on. I had really been on the wrong track. I'd been stupid enough to think that Leo had formed some protective attachment to me. Now I knew it was Marlene, love of Marlene, that was driving him, even to kill. Something really began to churn inside me. It was a mix of jealousy of what he and Marlene might have done together combined with some desire to separate my feelings for her from whatever a pig like Leo might feel. I studied him for a minute. He was heavier than the year before, and his hair had gotten shaggy, not all greased back like in high school. That someone like that could feel he had a right even to her memory was more than I could stand. But he raved on.
"The trouble with all you classy assholes is you're weak as hell. You think being cool, being smooth, is the way to handle things. And what happens to you? Some little creep, some foulmouthed little shit can say whatever he likes, even about someone like her."
This last was said in a tone like some priest talking about Mary.
"Hey, well, man, Leo," I sputtered, "I stand up for what I believe in. I've had some fights, and Finley didn't even get the words out of his mouth when I jumped in."
"Yeah, I know about your fights. Wimp against wimp. And even then you were lucky you didn't get your ass creamed. Let me tell you something. Guys like you - at the same time you're swinging at a guy you're praying it's all over. While you're fighting you're dreaming about shaking hands and making up. You think fights are some interruption of your coolness." He drew out the "cool."
"Buddy," he went on, "fights never stop. As long as you're alive you're in some fight, and the second you let up they know you're weak. I never let up, and that's the big difference between you and me. You're weak and what's worse, you show it. She was strong, about the strongest I've ever seen; I never could see why she let you come around her."
That really got to me. Now the poison shot all through my brain and drove out the fear. Quietly, deliberately, insinuating as hell, I said,
"Leo, just what was your relationship with Marlene?"
His face went deep red.
"What do you mean, 'my relationship?"'
"I mean, what were you to each other?"
Then amazingly, his control went altogether. In a cracked voice he stammered,
"You mean, was I screwing her like you were?"
Danny looked up again.
"Did she tell you that?"
"Tell, hell, who didn't know that?"
"Who knew it? I've never said anything like that to anyone."
"Oh, no, not you. Not a word. Cool as a cucumber. Not a word to anyone, and everyone knows everything. A real temple of virtue, but you just want ass like the rest of the cats. You'll even come down to the gutter for that."
But I wasn't distracted by all that. I pushed deeper.
"Well, were you - screwing her?"
Leo came back to himself, and his rage began to spill out, betraying him again.
"Mr. Clean, Mr. Classy-ass wants to know about my 'relationship' with Marlene. Well, figure it out for yourself, buddy; figure it out for yourself. You saw us together. You saw the time she spent with me. You think a guy like me hangs around a gal just to talk?" he screamed. "Figure it out for yourself."
I had.
The last thing I'd gone there for was to pick a fight with Leo Frank. And yet there he was making all the noises of a man who'd just lost. Without taking a swing, without a blow landing, I'd beaten him on his own ground. I watched as all of this filtered through to him, as the realization of what he'd admitted made itself clear.
Now a steely calm encased his fury. Slowly he moved around the pool table toward me, holding the cue with the thick end up. Danny was all eyes now, and I saw him reach under the bar for something. Maybe Leo noticed that movement, too. For some reason, I felt tremendously calm as I nonchalantly circled the table myself, keeping slightly out of Leo's reach.
"Take it easy, Leo. I know what a stud you are. How could anyone doubt it?"
"You worthless little shit I'm going to beat in that pretty face, I'm going to drive this thing right through that great brain, that wise-ass, know-it-all brain."
"Marlene often told me what a great man you were. She said maybe I could learn some things from you. Maybe she thought we could be buddies," I said, twisting the blade.
He stopped his advance and stared at me like he was dizzied by this sudden reversal. He glanced at Danny, whose hand was still under the bar, and then back at me like some great beast caught in a trap he couldn't figure out. Then his shoulders sagged; he lay the cue on the table and stared at his hands for a while. When he looked back at me the light from the green-shaded lamp hanging between us just caught the tear that was forming.
"She was just a piece of ass to you," his voice cracked. "Why didn't you just ask me? I could have gotten you as much ass as you wanted, any way you wanted. But instead you just used her and drove her out. She was - she was..."
He couldn't finish.
I suppose that, if I couldn't feel any sympathy, at least the shock of what had just happened should have slowed me up. Danny was leaning on the bar looking like he'd just seen a train wreck. But something in me that I'd only felt once in a while - like when I won a race or sometimes after sex - rose up and took me over. I just wanted to finish Leo off. Any emotion left my eyes. In the same dry, measured tone as before I said to him,
"What went on between Marlene and me is none of your goddam business. Naturally, a guy like you'd only see it in terms of ass. Did she tell you she was going? Did she write to you? How much do you think you meant to her? I'm going to Philadelphia next summer to be with her. We'll probably get married in a couple of years."
Leo looked up at me sharply, knowingly. I waited for him to say something like that was all bullshit, but instead, unconsciously, in the ancient homage of the tough guys to the smart guys, he dropped his eyes slightly and hesitated. He wasn't quite sure. Instead he said,
"You'll never see her again. You don't even want to."
God how I hated the asshole! It was just too much. After all the shit I'd gone through that summer, for him to say I didn't love Marlene was more than I could take. I wanted to jump up on the table, grab the cue and beat the living shit out of him. I wanted to decapitate him, to disembowel him, to dismember him, to grab his limbs and spray his blood all over the pool hall. But then...that would be giving up my only advantage over him. Very dryly, very condescendingly, I came back,
"I'll see her before you will, Leo."
He turned and walked over to the bar where he threw himself down on a stool and dropped his head on his arms. Danny went to get him a beer and signaled me with his head to get the hell out of there. I waved at Dan as I left, but he just shook his head.
I didn't know what to feel after all that. I guess I should have felt pretty good, but mainly I was just tired. Life put you through such shit. So you screwed someone like Leo Frank into the ground. What did it get you? And then there was that shitty little something that nagged around the edges. What was it? I put it out of my mind then, but now that I think back about it, I wonder. Could it have been doubt? Did I think Leo might have been right? Or worse, was I really sure who loved Marlene better?
I expected nothing but trouble the way that school year started, but then things began to turn up. A year before I'd been so worried about popularity, but after all I'd been through, I didn't give a damn about that anymore. And yet popularity of a sort - or at least notoriety plus a certain respect - did come along. It really had more to do with illusion than anything else.
Take toughness, for example. I'd developed a little reputation there, especially after the thing with Robertson the year before. When we came back from suspension, he still had a hell of a black eye. He told everyone it was from bumping my elbow - which was true - but it seemed like not many believed him. And I really had whipped Finley’s ass, but he was mostly just all mouth. Leo was right about me, though: I wasn't a fighter. A bad temper had gotten me into fights and luck had gotten me out. I knew it couldn't last, so I decided to avoid situations like that as much as I could. Still, the illusion of toughness was there.
Then there was my supposed friendship with Leo. One day after I got off suspension Al came up to me while I was eating lunch on the lawn behind the school. He thanked me for talking to Leo. I told him again that I hadn't had anything to do with it before or after, but he thanked me again and then walked away with a sarcastic little smile. God damn! I hated that shit-eating little smile. It was like it erased four years of friendship just a stupid-ass smile. I never talked much to Al again after that.
It was funny, though, that the trouble with Finley did stop. The thing was that Leo just disappeared. Dan wasn't sure what happened to him, but he told me that Leo'd been getting crazier ever since he got out of school the year before, or about the time Marlene left. His hassle with Finley was just the latest thing; the cops had been around the pool hall looking for him for some other stuff also. Dan heard that he'd decided to visit some relatives in San Francisco. At school, though, a lot of kids thought I had something to do with it. I just kept quiet.
That same week, Ron Holmer, one of the most popular kids in our class, stopped me on the stairs to tell me he thought the principal had been really unfair suspending me and that it was about time someone put Finley down. He invited me to a party at his place that weekend. Stuff like that went on all week. Guys who'd barely talked to me the year before all wanted to get in the good word.
Sports went pretty well, too. When I got back it was already late in the cross country season, but Soz wanted me to go out anyway. Right off, I won two meets. All the working out at high altitude really paid off. But the truth was my heart wasn't in it, not like the year before. I stayed with running that year and the next, but I never achieved what I could have if I'd really worked at it.
Soz knew it. At first he tried a lot with me, but gradually he just let off til we really had very little to say to each other. Still, the kids on the track team picked me for captain my senior year, and I even got elected to the student council as athletics commissioner. Such was the power of illusion.
And then there was sex. The stories about Marlene and me were still going around. After what happened with Finley, anyone who mentioned her to me was pretty careful how he phrased it, but a lot couldn't resist trying to get me to say something. I just kept quiet and let the mystery grow.
The truth was that by that time I'd developed a pretty fair appetite for sex. I tried to be cool and discreet about it and to only get involved with girls I liked, but I found that the range of girls I could get to like was pretty wide. Of course, things were a lot more uptight those days than now, but that's where the value of a little mystery came in. If it helped my popularity, it was dynamite with the sex life. Nothing attracts like a little danger, and even in those days there were quite a few young ladies who appreciated a man with experience, a closed mouth, and some protection, which I never failed to carry in my wallet. Strangely enough, the more I got, the more the mystery grew, and the easier it was to get more. I never talked about any of them, but somehow they all knew.
When I think about it, though, I suppose that the main reason why I was pretty successful at getting it while others weren't was that, basically, I needed it, and maybe, despite all their groaning, they didn't. You see, ever since that summer I would get these feelings. It was hard for me to go into dark rooms, and stormy days really got me on edge. It wasn't like I ever thought about...about what I thought about in Grandpa's room. It was funny how Frank watched me those weeks I spent with them, like I might try it again.
Like I said, I never intended to do something like that, but I just couldn't seem to see any other way out of that room. When Frank got me out, I never went that way again. Still, whenever I got to feeling nervous after that, it wasn't very long before I'd be looking for a girl. At least for those moments I could drive the darkness away and be a kid a little while longer.
Generally, though, things went pretty well through the rest of high school. I guess you could say I was successful. I guess you could say I was pretty happy. Gradually I stopped thinking very much about Marlene at all.
That is, until one day after school, when I found a letter on my dresser. I was a little surprised my mother had brought it all the way back to my room, but then I recognized the handwriting. I guess she knew who it was from, too. Maybe she thought - hoped - I'd run away for good this time.
I turned the envelope over quickly, before I could see the return address. My head filled up so fast I really couldn't think about things right then. I'd bought some used weights and an old bench which I'd put in the corner of my room. For about half an hour I worked out while my head worked things over. Then I went to the dresser and stared at the back of the envelope again.
Finally I took it into the kitchen, turned on a stove burner, and set the letter, face down, over the fire. It was sort of thick and took several minutes to burn completely. It was a stupid way to get rid of it because it made a lot of smoke and ashes. I opened a window, but it was hard to see for a while. My eyes seemed very messed up. Still, I managed to get most of the ashes cleaned out of the stove.
Since summer I'd never really thought seriously about what I'd do if I ever heard from Marlene again. She'd become a little unreal in my mind, like the star of some movie you'd really liked, but hadn't seen for a long time. Actually, a lot of things that had happened before that last summer were looking that way to me. It was getting difficult to think about some things or even remember them.
And then there was Marlene, herself. It wasn't that I thought she was...what Robertson had said, but she did have problems. And at that point problems were something I definitely did not need more of.
But the truth is it was really something else that made me burn that letter. It was something her father had said when he came to our house. It wasn’t that stuff about what happened to Marlene in Chicago. I didn’t need all the details, but I’d already figured she’d been through something pretty bad. No, what bothered me was what he’d said about my “gift.” In the last letter Marlene had written before summer she'd said some stuff like I had this really great gift and that I should learn about it and try to use it for people's good and all that. I don’t know if that was her idea or if she got it from her father, but I guess one reason I never wrote back to her was that I was afraid she might start up with more stuff like that. I never heard from her or saw her again.

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