Michael Loyd Gray
1.
THE PLAN
The rumor that year in Argus,
Illinois, was that Margie Heinrich and her cheerleader girlfriends
skinny-dipped out at Cottage Pond. No one had witnessed it, but Billy
Ray Fleener, who was a year behind Margie at Curtis LeMay High School,
wasn't taking any chances. When he wasn't waiting for abrupt boners to
subside under his Levi’s, he routinely mounted his ten-speed and
furiously pedaled the three miles out to the pond, which was shaded by
a thick grove of Cottonwoods and Pawpaws favored by family gatherings
and teenagers looking to French kiss and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
There was no cottage at Cottage
Pond, and when asked, Argus citizens would scratch heads and shrug
shoulders and reveal they really had no idea why it was called Cottage
Pond. It didn't even have much in the way of amenities: a few
splintered picnic tables with several decades of initials gouged in
them, the occasional soiled condom, and a few rusty barbecue grills the
forest preserve crews were supposed to clean, but never did. Dubious
Cottage Pond history asserted that Abraham Lincoln once fished there,
U.S. Grant once skinny-dipped there, and Ronald Reagan once peed
there, which vexed the McLean County Republican Party to no end.
None of that mattered a lick to Billy Ray, who was 16 but already
5-foot-10 and beginning to fill out. He was considered a good-looking
boy, though perhaps some folks felt his sideburns inched too far down
his cheeks like fuzzy caterpillars in a hurry, which suggested the
potential for impertinence, or even dissipation, though that was just
idle speculation; the only impertinent thoughts on Billy Ray's mind
concerned the peach fuzz he had once glimpsed on Margie's brown thighs
where her cut-off jeans ended and the eternal anatomical mystery began.
It was July, 1966, and so far all
Billy Ray had seen at the pond were some holy-roller types holding
hands at a Baptist Church barbecue. Most of the time the pond was
deserted except for a solitary fisherman wielding a cane pole.
Sometimes Billy Ray remembered to pack his telescoping fishing rod in
his backpack and he would catch bluegills and catfish. One day he
surprised a fox taking an early morning drink. He even spotted a pair
of pink panties draped over a low-hanging branch; and once someone left
a perfectly good Playboy on a picnic table. It was better than nothing,
but not by much.
Billy Ray was a restless boy who
sensed manhood was not so far off and he had a plan of sorts for easing
into it: he fancied going out to California to become a professional
surfer. He'd get a cool name, like Moondoggy (he knew that one was
taken by somebody in the movies), or Sharkman (his current favorite was
Tubular Boy), and he would wear baggies and surfer shirts, listen to
the Beach Boy, and wax his board a lot in the company of surfer girls
in bikinis. He bought Surfer magazine at the Walgreen's in downtown
Argus and already knew some of the surfer lingo. His favorite surfer
expression was "cowabunga." He didn't know what it meant exactly, or
whether it actually was a real word; he just knew surfers said it a
lot, especially when they were riding an awesome wave.
As part of the plan, Billy Ray also though it would be a fine idea if
somehow before he hit California he could lose his cherry to Margie
Heinrich, who he was certain had lost hers already, perhaps even at
Cottage Pond. Those panties he found could have been hers, though he
had to admit to himself they seemed a little too large and matronly for
someone like Margie.
The Plan had one fundamental
flaw: Billy Ray had no money and no car, and he was still in high
school in east central Illinois. The closest thing to surf: waves of
corn that shimmied and rattled when there was a breeze. California was
more a state of mind, a concept or philosophy, than a reality to Billy
Ray, who had nonetheless scrutinized it pretty well in the atlas at the
school library; but the closest he'd ever been was when his family
visited relatives in Quincy, Illinois, which was on the Mississippi
River across from Missouri. He checked, but there definitely was no
surfing on the Mississippi. No waves at all that he could see except
the bow waves from immense grain barges. Otherwise, the mighty river
was just flat and brown sludge lurching south. He couldn't see why Mark
Twain got such a boner over it.
On this particular day at Cottage
Pond the picnic tables had been pushed together in a long row to
accommodate the ladies of the Argus Flower Garden Society, which was a
definite sign to Billy Ray that there would be no Margie Heinrich
skinny-dipping with her friends. Several of the ladies recognized him
and waved, chief among them Mrs. Dobbs, who lived across the street
from Billy Ray and who tended a very colorful garden of marigolds and
gardenias and a bunch of others Billy Ray couldn't name. He forced a
smile and waved back at Mrs. Dobbs, and as he turned to pedal back to
Argus, he heard a hideous commotion erupt, the main eruption coming
from Minnie Sullivan, wife of Argus Mayor Hedges Sullivan.
The tables were abruptly emptied
of ladies, who all fled to the nearest bank of Cottage Pond, where Mrs.
Sullivan was pointing and hopping up and down and basically creeping
Billy Ray, who figured she was having another of her spells, which
usually signaled that she believed herself in the presence of The Lord.
All the commotion turned out to be focused on Mrs. Sullivan's wiener
dog -- Purdy Boy -- who somehow had gotten himself smack in the middle
of Cottage Pond.
As Purdy Boy dogpaddled in a
circle in the pond, Mrs. Sullivan shrieked even louder and all the
ladies joined in and made it a choir. They were dressed to the nines,
Billy Ray noted, in fine silk dresses and high heels and voluminous
hats and white gloves, and he wondered for a moment why they'd put on
those costumes to sit around picnic tables in the grass by a pond, but
he had lately given up on understanding why adults insisted on .doing
everything in high ceremony.
It was Mrs. Dobbs who summoned
Billy Ray first, but Minnie Sullivan was also quick to implore him to
jump in and save Purdy Boy, who truth be told, Billy Ray thought,
looked like a pretty good swimmer. But the little wiener dog showed
signs of fatigue and panic. After he slipped beneath the surface once
and popped up sputtering water, Billy Ray resigned himself to his fate
and kicked off his Converse basketball shoes, slipped off his t-shirt
and waded into Cottage Pond, where by then Purdy Boy had gone under
again and Billy Ray got to him just in time.
But fetching Purdy Boy proved to
be only the start of Billy Ray's tribulations because once he'd
deposited the scrawny, saturated critter on the ground, Purdy Boy
didn't move. He just remained in a Wiener dog fetal position. Minnie
Sullivan began to pray for her Purdy Boy and all the other ladies
conveyed looks of shock so grave as to nearly suggest the ones they had
the day President Kennedy was shot in Dallas.
Billy Ray liked dogs and all
animals as much as the next guy, but what really motivated him was the
fear of riding back to Argus with a wet and smelly dead wiener dog on
his lap and fifteen shrieking ladies, so he went to work on Purdy Boy,
first massaging his stomach and holding him up with his head down to
maybe drain the water. Finally, in desperation, he opened the dog's
mouth and tried blowing into it like his gym teacher had demonstrated
mouth-to-mouth in first aid class. He had often fantasized about
mouth-to-mouth with Margie, and even practiced inhaling and
exhaling when no one was looking. Maybe that was what did it because
Purdy Boy opened his eyes and vomited some water and something
greenish. After a few minutes he was even wagging his wiener dog tail.
Minnie Sullivan insisted that Billy Ray put his bike in the back of
Mrs. Dobbs' Rambler station wagon and ride back to Argus with the
ladies. Someone produced a towel that had been used to cushion bowls of
potato salad on the ride out and he slipped on his t-shirt but had to
ride back with wet jeans and surrounded by flower ladies who kept
shooting him adoring glances.
In Argus they stopped at Mayor
Sullivan's office, where Minnie regaled her husband with the tale of
Purdy Boy's brush with death and proclaimed Billy Ray a hero, to which
Mayor Sullivan seconded the motion. Someone asked Billy Ray what he'd
like as a reward. Billy Ray remembered that he had a plan to get to
California and surf. So he said he could use some kind of job for the
summer. Mayor Sullivan said he'd get right to work on finding him one,
but on the spot awarded him $50 from the Argus Good Deeds Program.
Minnie Sullivan had Billy Ray and his parents over to her house the
next day for lemonade and fresh-baked cookies. Everyone said his rescue
of Purdy Boy indicated Billy Ray was blessed with luck and had a bright
life ahead of him. When someone asked him what he wished for in the
future, he just smiled and everyone took it for modesty, a quality
much-valued in Argus.
But actually Billy Ray was silent
because he was assessing whether his star had brightened enough so he
could get into Margie Heinrich's pants.