Part II of

i i



Kevin Foster felt stretched already and it was only one in the afternoon of the first day of school. The kids parted ways for him in the large hallway of Jamnia high school, the football players greeted him--“Hey Coach Foster!”

He smiled back and waved. It had gotten back to him that this was what they appreciated about him and what, in the long run, the school appreciated. He was young, handsome and friendly. Coach Rodney had been demoted the year before and all because it had made it to the school board that he was “a bastard.”

The bells rang, the hall cleared, Kevin was late for his own class. He came down the empty lobby, one end leading to Michael Street and the main entrance, the other leading to the large parking lot behind the school. Kevin went nearer Michael Street, past the trophy cases and photographs of football teams, basketball teams, and wrestling squads from years gone by.

He entered the large gymnasium with the Jamnia Wildcat painted over the bleachers. Kids were sitting there, looking sullen the way only teenagers could. Had he been like this when he was their age. It hadn’t been that long ago. It had been in this school. In this gym.

Kevin clapped his hands:

“Alright guys, when I say your name come and stand on the free throw line. I want you all to make a line. We’re gonna play basketball today.

“Ray Allen, Jay Alred, Martin Bedford, Roy--”

He stopped.

Roy, in jeans and a too hot for early September dress shirt was sitting blue eyed and nervous and skinny between two fat boys. He looked up.

“Roy Cane,” Kevin said.

Roy stood up and crossed the yellow polished wood to the free throw line.

Kevin’s eyes followed him. He forgot himself for a moment and then said, “Bryan Canfield! Bryan Canfield!”



“Well this is the sorriest Linus Roache Fan Club meeting we’ve ever had,” Vaughan told Tina that afternoon.

“Not the sorriest,” Tina disagreed. “The two coolest people showed up.” With her smoldering cigarette she gestured from herself to Vaughan who nodded, regally.

They sat in the turret room next door to Vaughan’s, renamed the BBC-orium. Hung with posters of Doctor Who, Benny Hill, and Mr. Humphrey’s wagging an outrageous finger and demanding, “Are you free?” Most prominant, over a battered, plaid sofa hung a poster of the “devastatingly gorgeous,” Tina often said, Linus Roache. The whole club began and ended with him and most of the time Vaughan and Tina were accompanied by Mackenzie and Madeleine. Madeleine had never brought any of her boyfriends. You had to be an Anglophile to get any of the jokes or else you’d never understand why whenever someone had to go to the bathroom they said they were “popping off to the TARDIS.” Claudia had come once or twice, but it was just too much. The only other occasional visitors was Mackenzie and Tina’s Grandmother, Ida. Once Grandma Ida’s sisters had come, but in their case it had been they who were too much for the Fan Club.

An east wind blew through the browned lace curtains over the coach. They could hear the band playing “Eleanor Rigby”--badly.

“Oh, look at all the lonely people,” Tina muttered, putting out her cigarette and sipping her lemonade. “So, how do you think the first day of transformation went?”

“Life changing as intended,” said Vaughan. He reached for his cigarettes--which he was beginning to like. “I think I almost cried.” Instead he inhaled.

Tina chuckled, and said, “I almost cried when I heard about you and the switch blade.”

Vaughan reached into the cuff of his pants and took it out, kissed it, and grinned.

“I would never stab anyone with this,”

“No,” Tina agreed, putting her feet up on the old coffee table that had come from one of Our Lady of Jamnia’s rummage sales, “but you could certainly fuck up the detail on someone’s car.”

“That is exactly what I was thinking. Where is Madeleine?”

“Do you think she’d fuck up the detail on someone’s car?”

“Rodder’s, Bone Mc.Arthur’s? Yeah. She would.”

Tina nodded as if to say that she agreed. “That’s what’s beautiful about her. Your sister’s just a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.”

“I think it’s already happened.”

Tina turned around and looked out the window, the lace curtains blew around her, settling on the back of her black head.

“Thank God,” she muttered, “the band’s finished.... doing whatever they do.”

“I think they call it practice.”

“They should call it ‘torturing the classics’.”





Cedric Fitzgerald and Ida Lawry sat on the large front porch of 1959 Michael Street smoking contentedly on the swing and ignoring a large black man in a purple and blue floral print with a bronze colored weave and red lips.

“Oooh, look, Cedric. Here come Ralph. Ralph! Hey! Hey Ralph!”

“I already saw Ralph,” Cedric told Glodine.

The woman beside Cedric, her pale bronze hair tied back by a silk scarf, said nothing but continued swinging and rocking.

Ralph Hanley waved as he pushed open the gate and came up the walkway.

“He is so fine,” Glodine muttered to his.. or her cousin. “That brother was wasted on the priesthood.”

“Because of course, if he hadn’t become a priest you would have had a shot with him.” said Cedric.

Ida only made a chuckle that sounded like she’d been briefly strangled.

Glodine muttered, “You ain’t got to be rude like all that.”

“There’s lemonade in the fridge,” Cedric told Ralph. He moved over. “Space on the porch swing.”

“That sounds real good,” the priest said wiping sweat from his brow in time for it to pop right up again, “real good.”

Ralph sat down, legs wide apart. He was taller than Cedric, who looked like he should have ended up being the cleric. Ralph Hanley was all in black even on a day this hot, smelling of sweat, his light skin beaded with perspiration.

“I told you there’s lemonade in the fridge, Ralph.”

The green eyed priest looked vapidly at his old friend.

“It’s been a long day,” said Ralph. “I’ve been out all day chasing after truant boys and Father Brumbaugh--who was naked again. It’s been a long day. Ced, I’m mighty tired.”

Cedric’s eyebrow rose as Ralph kept smiling.

“Fine, I’ll get you the damned drink.” Cedric got up. “Leave my cigarettes alone,” he said.

Ralph threw back his head and laughed, dropping the barker’s hat he held in his hands. And then, once Cedric had gone into the house, he reached for his best friend’s Pall Mall’s and took two out, lighting them both and sticking them in the corners of his mouth.

“Well if the whole world changes,” Ida said, “It’s good to know we don’t change.”

Ralph inhaled, blew out smoke and raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, we’re still all here,” she said.

Cedric came out. “Damnit, Ralph!”

Ralph laughed, took one cigarette from his mouth, and tucked it in Cedric’s.

“I suppose you think that makes up for stealing my damn cigarettes and showing up here all smelly, expecting me to be your housemaid ?”

Ralph did not answer. He just took a very long drag from his cigarette.

“Well here comes Miss Mackenzie!” Glodine cried.

“Does he have to call my grandson ‘miss’?” Ida said.

“He calls everybody miss,” Cedric said dismissively.

“But still...” Ida started, then shrugged, said, “Oh, fuck it,” and took the other cigarette from Ralph’s mouth.

Mackenzie was toting his band uniform over one arm, and looked surprised by the presence of so many strange adults on the Fitzgerald porch. He greeted them all from right to left, as seemed mannerly, and then kissed his grandmother on the cheek.

“Doesn’t Martina look outrageous?” Ida said.

“Mom doesn’t really like it,” Mackenzie told her. “Dad’s going to explode when he sees it.”

“They’ll get over it.” Ida stated.

Cedric asked Mackenzie if he’d seen Madeleine.

The boy furrowed his brow and said, “No.”

“Alright, run along and play,” Cedric said. “Don’t drink up all the vodka though.”

“Alright, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Mackenzie grinned and went into the house.

































Blood loss in a bathroom stall

Southern girl with a skylit drawl

wave goodbye to ma and paw

cause



with the birds I’ll share this lonely view!

with the birds I’ll share this lonely view!



soft spoken with a broken jaw

step outside but not to brawl

and

autumn’s sweet-- we call it fall

I’ll

make it to the moon

if I have to crawl

cause

with this birds I’ll share this lonely view!

with the birds I’ll share this lonely view!

WITH THE BIRDS I’LL SHARE THIS LONELY VIEW!



Roy and Ian Cane sat in Ian’s bedroom overlooking the large backyard and the woods beyond.

“I like your house so much better,” Roy said, stretching out on his cousin’s bed.

Ian, busy working at the his desk under the light of the yellow lamp, licked his bottom lip and said, “You can have it. But you gotta take my parents too.”.

“Your parents aren’t bad. Uncle Sam is nice.”

“Then it’s a deal,” Ian said in a monotone that meant he was concentrating on something else, “you can have him and the house.

Suddenly Ian swiveled around his chair.

“Goddamn!” Roy sat up. “That’s huge.”

“For first day of school blues,” Ian explained. “A blunt for two.”

Roy shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” Ian said.

Roy shrugged, then said, “I don’t really wanna do it.”

Ian cocked his head, and frowned, discovering something.

The Red Hot Chilli Peppers sang on:



with this birds I’ll share this lonely view!

with the birds I’ll share this lonely view!

WITH THE BIRDS I’LL SHARE THIS LONELY VIEW!





“You didn’t want to do it all those other times did you?”

Roy didn’t say anything. He finally shook his head.

“You should have just said no,” Ian wagged his finger at his cousin. “Roy, you should have told me. I’m not gonna make you do something you don’t want to do.”

“Are you going to?”

“To smoke this?” Ian looked at the blunt.

“It’s big.” Roy said innocently.

“Why, yes it is!” Ian smiled. “Please be a good cousin and get a fan to point this out the window--not over the backyard. Mom and Dad won’t be coming back any time soon, but if they do we don’t want it smelling like Woodstock. Point it out north, over that cornfield. Oh, my God I live next door to a cornfield!” Ian said. “Just another reason to get blazed. And be a dear friend, Cuz,” Ian said, taking his lighter and burning the end of the blunt, “and put my towel under the door and break out the Nag Champa.”

Ian inhaled and closed his eyes. He exhaled slowly and smiled. “Not that shitty stuff that’s been coming out of central Indiana.”

“Ian?” Roy said, “where do you keep the incense?”

Nodding and inhaling, his older cousin pointed to the bookshelf. His was quiet and restrained, he was holding the smoke in his lungs.

“Behind the globe.”

Ian lay back on his bed and began to forget that he hated the ten hours a day that went into high school.





Mick Rafferty wanted things to change. They had changed a little in the fact that he was no longer the gym teacher. Now people might start to take him seriously. He loved basketball but was thinking that maybe he shouldn’t, then it would be easier to give up being a basketball coach. No one took coaches seriously, Mick reflected. Or at least not the people who counted.

Mick admitted to himsef that he didn’t know who counted, but he knew that he wanted to be respected by more than the Jamnia High School boy’s basketball team. The respect of the Wildcats had always been around. This was the town he’d lived in his whole life. The gymnasium he passed on his way to the parking lot was the same one he’d played basketball in not even a decade ago. Then he’d played basketball in college, working on his teaching degree with the full knowledge that he’d never be in the NBA. After college he’d taught in Bashan--where he should have stayed. For some reason it seemed important to get back to Jamnia, and when his current position was opened, he’d jumped at the chance.

This was the beginning of his third year at Jamnia High School.

Mick was playing toss and catch with his keys as he looked out on the parking lot from the porch where, during the school day, kids in black sat and smoked and hated life.

“These cars,” he murmured, looking at the remaining vehicles of the cheerleaders and football players, band members. “look better than mine.”

He was making his way to the old Sentra with the rosary wrapped around the rearview mirror and the plastic Virgin Mary on the dashboard when he was nearly knocked over.

“Oh,” he heard a girl’s voice. “Sorry Mr. Rafferty!”

He shook the confusion out of his head and frowning saw Madeline Fitzgerald.

“Is something wrong, Mad--”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing’s wrong at all, Mr. Rafferty. Have a good day.”

She nodded bravely and went on.

Unlocking his car, the schoolteacher stole a glance toward where Madeleine had come from.

At the edge of the parking lot, in various disdainful poses stood Bone Mc.Arthur flanked by Dice McCafferty and Rick Shaker. They were in their white practice uniforms and Dice stood with his helmet under his arm and his jack-o-lantern face grinning after Madeliene. For that moment Mick Rafferty didn’t like the boy very much.

Then he stopped thinking about Dice or Madeleine altogether when She came up behind them and Bone wrapped a massive arm around her. They all turned their attention to her.

Ashley Foster.

She looked like her mother had once, Mick thought, remembering those days in high school when Kevin and Aileen were newlyweds and she would swing over to the school after he’d just started teaching. Her hair would be hanging golden. She’d smell of roses and good perfume. Too young to be married and a mother she had been the subject of chivalrous and pornographic fantasies late at night, the cause of many wet bed sheets in the morning.

And then Ashley turned her full blue gaze on Mick and smiled. Up until then no one else had noticed Mick. Now all the boys did. They waved, dutifully. Bone said, “Have a good night, Mr. Rafferty.”

Mick’s mood was broken.

Red faced, he waved back and climbed into his car.



When the four on the porch saw Madeleine marching up Michael Street, through the gate and past the porch without a word, Father Hanley said, “I wonder what happened to her.”

“I don’t know,” Cedric admitted with a shrug, “but it’s probably her fault.”



“You’re late,” Tina said, handing Madeleine a cigarette, which she gladly took before collapsing on the beanbag.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Madeleine said.

“Alright,” Vaughan said.

“I was leaving the first meeting of drama society,” Madeleine began, sitting up, “and I run into Bone and Dice and that son of a bitch Rick was there too.”

“Rick Shaker?” said Tina.

“Um hum. Ugly bastard.”

“I used to think he was cute.”

Madeleine eyed her friend.

“I said ‘used to’,” Tina sank into the sofa beside Mackenzie.

“Rodder had been with them, but when he saw me he just sort of moved away.”

“Son of a bitch!” Tina said, dutifully indignant.

“Exactly. But that’s not the real part. I’m walking off, trying to be decent, and they’re all giving me the look.”

“What look?” Mackenzie said, puzzled.

“The sex look,” Vaughan answered.

“Thank you,” Madeleine said to her brother. “And that’s when I know.”

Mackenzie looked more confused.

“Know that they know,” Madeleine said, taking a drag from her cigarette.

Mackenzie still looked confused and Vaughan said, “Know that they all know that they all fucked you?”

Madeleine gave her brother a sour look, but said, “that was what I was getting at--in a more tactful way.”

“It’s no tactful way to fuck half the football team,” her brother disagreed. But Madeleine continued.

“They’re all just giving me this look. And Dice--who has your father’s face.” she told Martina.

“He’s our cousin,” she shrugged. The shit couldn’t be helped.

“He looks like a jack o’ lantern.”

“I know, they all do. It’s the Cherokee blood.”

“Anyway he’s giving me that look and sneering and they all are, and then he says, ’ ‘So--whose is biggest?’ ”

“And you said,” Vaughan and Tina leaned forward in tandem, cigarettes smoldering.

“I said, you all should know, you’ve been sucking off each other for the last four years.”

“And they said?” Vaughan inquired.

“Bone said,” Madeleine corrected, finishing her cigarette, “She’s had so much she can’t remember whose is what. And they just start laughing. Meanwhile, Tina, your sister--who’s probably done them all and whom I will cut before the end of the year--”

“You have my permission, and Vaughan’s switchblade.”

“You’re too gracious. Anyway, Ash is coming up behind them and that’s when Bone says that maybe they can all have me together and I’d probably go in for something like that. and that’s when I left. I was so mad. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I know what you shouldn’t have done,” Vaughan commented.

“Yes, I know, Vaughan. You’re always so right, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And where the hell did you get a switchblade from? Nevermind,” Madeleine waved off any answer her little brother might give. “To make it all worse, I ended up bumping into Mr. Rafferty. I crashed right into him. And THAT was the end of me embarrassing day,” Madeleine said.

“And just think,” her brother murmured. “It all starts up again tomorrow.”

“Shit,” Madeleine muttered, “I need another cigarette.”



On their way home Tina stopped suddenly.

“What?”

“Don’t you ever wonder?”

“About what?” said Mackenzie.

“About those?”

She pointed ahead to the series of abandoned white towers before the train tracks, empty white corrugated steel buildings that resembled giant used up milk cartons. They were limned by the western sunlight. The sky was deep blue behind them and birds were settling on phone lines. To Tina it was all very beautiful.

“I honestly don’t wonder about them,” Mackenzie said. “But Mom’ll wonder about us if we don’t get home soon.”

“One day I’m gonna go up them,” Tina said. “I’m gonna climb up in those buildings and see what’s going on.”

“They’re abandoned.”

“I’ll live in them. They’re like... it’s like a castle or something. These are like Midwestern castles.”

“You’re nuts, Tina,” Mackenzie shook his head and walked on. His sister followed him across the train tracks.

“I love the Midwest,” she said.

“Now I know you’re nuts,” Mackenzie told her.



When Cedric heard that his daughter had decided to go to bed early, he went upstairs, tapped on the door and did not wait for an answer.

“How many curtains do you have in here?” Cedric murmured, sitting on the side of the bed. “It’s as dark as the first day of creation. And it’s hot. You should open a window.”

“If you got central air I wouldn’t have to open a window.”

Cedric ignored that comment.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come down for dinner.”

“Yes.”

“I made biscuit pot pie.”

“As tempting as that is, Daddy, I think I’ll refrain tonight.”

“Does this have anything to do with boys.”

“I hate boys,” Madeleine said. “I want to be a lesbian.”

“Well, you’ve come to far in the heterosexual world to quit now,” Cedric said.

Madeleine sat up in bed.

“Daddy, I’ve been so stupid.”

Cedric only nodded his head.

“I was very stupid this summer. I’ve been very stupid. If you say I told you so--”

“If I say, ‘I told you so’ I’ll slap myself in the mouth.” Cedric assured his daughter.

“Oh, Daddy,” Madeleine said and hugged her father, burying her face in his shoulder.

“If it’s too stressful, I suppose you don’t have to go to school tomorrow. But I wouldn’t advise it. Best thing to do is face your problems.”

“Daddy, I know. But I don’t want to go to school. I will though. I don’t want to be in Jamnia. I want to wake up in Paris.”

“Your problems’ll be in Paris too.”

“Rodder Gonzales,” Madeleine said, “will certainly not be in Paris.”

It was not so dark that Cedric could not tilt his daughter’s face toward his and look her in the eye.

“Are you sure Rodder is your problem?” Cedric asked Madeleine.





i i i



“SO HE SAYS TO ME, ‘Father, the thing I don’t get is how does it feel to be thinking about sex all the time and never be able to get any. To which I reply, ‘Well, Rodney, believe it or not: there are actually times I don’t think about sex.’ And he says, ‘I sure hope that by the time I get to be the right age’--which, in my humble opinion, will be never-- ‘they have married priest’”

“I sure in the hell hope not,” said Ida, on the other side of Cedric. “Not if that means Rodney Callahn’s going into the seminary.”

The three of them were tramping across the field from Cedric’s house and the band was blasting away at “Luey! Luey!” for the first game of the year.

“Why are we going to this again?” Ida said.

“Because one of your grandsons is on the team, another’s on the band along with his twin sister. And another granddaughter is a cheerleader.”

“Um,” Ida shrugged as they approached the noise and the field. They walked for a while toward a set of bleachers until they realized these were for the opposing team. As fun as the idea seemed of sitting there anyway, they rejected it.

“And because your son-in-law’s the coach.” Ralph added.

“But Kevin’s a nut, and I don’t like my granddaughters,” Ida said, taking a sip from her pop.

“Ma’am. Sirs, have your bought your tickets yet?” a boy holding a roll of tickets asked, as they approached the metal stairway of the bleachers.

“Yes,” Cedric lied. The boy nodded and smiled, and the three climbed into the bleachers.

“We’ll find the band, sit near Mackenzie,” Ida said.

“I can’t believe you lied to the boy,” said Ralph.

“If you were disgusted, Father Hanley, why didn’t you correct me then?”

“It’s the whole poverty vow.”

“Yeah, I see,” Cedric murmured.

“I’m sorry,” Ida said, “but even as little as there is to do in Jamnia, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay money to sit here and watch a horrible football game we’ll probably lose.” Then she shouted-- “Aily!”

In the seats behind the team and under the bleechers where the band played, Aileen Foster stood up and looked in the direction of the voice that called her.

“Over here!” Ida screamed. “Scuse me, pardon me.”

She went ahead of Cedric and Ralph, stepping down pews, generally pissing people off as she moved into the band section.

“Do you mind if we sit right here?” she asked one of the boys in the band.

He smiled at her, and then said, “Not if you don’t, Ma’am? Sirs?” He scooted over. “Todd, let them sit down. Are you a band mom?” he asked Ida.

She smiled.

“Kid, you’re too sweet. I’m a band grandma. Twice over!”

Vaughan had already sneaked into the band section and she saw him beside Mackenzie, fiddling with his friend’s trombone as the blond boy removed his ridiculous band hat and wiped sweat from his brow.

Ida shouted, “Give ‘em hell! Kenzie!” and he turned in surprise and waved, smiling brightly.

“You’re his grandmother?” the boy smiled.

“Someone’s gotta be.”

“Mother, what are you doing here?” Aileen shouted from her seat three rows up.

“It’s a sunny-beautiful day in late summer? Why not come to a football game? Four of my grandkids here and everything.”

“I mean,” Aileen looked over Cedric and Ralph as well, “in the band section?”

“Why not?”

Someone tapped Ida on the shoulder.

“Yeah?” she said.

Aileen put one of her hands over her face in disbelief.

“Ma’am,” it was Mr. Stearne, “you shouldn’t be here. This is the band section and--”

“Look, if not for my loins you’d be missing a cheerleader, a trumpet player and saxophonists. Not to mention a football player, so I’m already all over this field.”

“Right on, lady,” said the boy beside her, heedless of a sharp look from Mr. Stearne.

“Whaddo you say, Ced?” she looked down at her friend, who had taken out his cigarettes, and was sharing them with a drummer.

“Uh,” he got quiet for a moment, gave Ralph a Pall Mall, and then stood up and said, “Get the soda boy over here? How’s free drinks for everyone!”

“Right on, man!” shouted another kid.

Ralph looked at Cedric, incredulously.

“What’s the good in having cash if you never spend it?” Cedric demanded.

Aileen’s eyes narrowed at Mr. Stearne. He looked like he was going to burst an artery. Well good, she’d never liked him anyway. Now he’d know what it was like to grow up with Ida and Cedric.





“TINA, YOU DON’T HAVE TO go with me.”

“Anytime you pop on over to the house and ask if I have a meat cleaver, and then say, ‘Thanks’, and head out the door-- I have to go with you.”

“Well, I thank you for driving too.”

“Least I could do,” but now Tina was doing all she could to catch up with Madeleine Fitzgerald whose black hair flew out in a self made wind.

“Well, this is it,” Madeleine noted as she approached the car.

“BONE # 1,” Tina read the license plate. In the distance the band was playing the theme to MASH. It was the half time show. “Conceited motherfucker,” Tina shook her head.

Madeleine took out the meat cleaver and hacked away at the white walls of the red Mustang.

“Shit!” Tina said.

Madeleine hacked and hacked, and then went to the next tire. She was tired after two.

“Want me to help?” Tina asked.

Panting, Madeleine swept the hair out of her face and, rising to her knees as she handed her friend the knife, said, “I thought you’d never ask.”



Rodder Gonzales, long limbed and clean shaven with a blue bandanna around his head, sat on the bleachers in his red and white uniform, gold helmet hanging between his knees. This was a game they could win. His mind was on how they might do it, not on the conversation circulating around his head or that almost-annoying-as-hell band music.

“Ashley can work that shit,” Rick Shaker was saying, rubbing his scraggly jaw. “Look at her, Dice, I could watch that shit for hours.”

“All you’ll be doing is watching,” Dice assured him, watching the head cheerleader toss her head and flash those blue eyes of hers like a cupie doll. Her smile was promising too much for the public to bear. “You know the Fosters.” Dice said.

“You’re thinking about that Lindsay, bitch. She’s a fuckin’ prude,” Rick said. “She’s a little hot. Not like Tina. That bitch is a freak and half anyway, but even last year she looked like a wallflower. Tina’s a hag but Lindsay’s an uptight bitch. Now Ash, I wanna hit her shit before the year’s out.”

“You can’t hit Ashley’s shit,” Dice muttered.

“Cause she’s your cousin?”

“No, ‘cause she’s not like that. I already told you--”

“Bullshit,” Bone said, “Rodder already broke a piece off of that, didn’t you, Rod?”

“Hum?” Rodder shook his head and stared up at them for a moment.

“I said you fucked Ash Foster, didn’t you?”

“Guys, I’m trying to find out how we can win this game.”

“I’m trying to find out how I can fuck Ashley.” Rick moaned.

“Well, maybe if you spent more time figuring out how we could actually play better, we might actually make it to championship this year?”

Bone raised an eyebrow and turned around. “Maybe if you hadn’t fucked Ashley, Madeleine wouldn’t be running around--”

But then Rodder turned a glance on Bone, and he shut up.



At half time Madeleine and Tina showed up, climbing through the bleachers. Madeleine looked exhausted and satisfied and she wrapped her arm around Cedric saying, “Daddy, I love you.” Then, passing Cedric the meat cleaver, she said, “Hold this. It’s Mrs. Foster’s.”

Cedric obeyed his daughter, and did not want to know why she had Aileen Foster’s meat cleaver.

The band was all out on the field behind the bleachers drinking sodas, and Mackenzie and Vaughan came toward Cedric and Ida Lawry, the latter who was holding a cigarette in one hand and a Coke in the other.

“You’re the one that’s giving out all the free pops,” he said to his grandmother.

“No,” Ida gestured with a cigarette to Cedric. “It’s the Black Marvel.”

“And cigarettes too,” said the boy, who had stood beside Ida. Mackenzie’s eyes flew open because he had never seen him smile.

The boy looked at Cedric and then Vaughan and said, “Wait, you all are--”

“That’s my father,” Vaughan said.

“And you almost sound like you’re not ashamed,” Cedric drawled with a half smile.

“And this is your grandma?” the boy said to Mackenzie.

Mackenzie nodded.

The boy smiled and offered his hand, “I’m Ian Cane.”

Mackenzie took it, gratefully. “I’m Mackenzie Foster.”

Mackenzie had never seen Ian smile and be welcoming, and it amazed him. He suddenly realized he’d been so obsessed because he wanted to be friends.

Ian was about to introduce himself to Vaughan when Vaughan said, “We already know who you are. You’ve gotta know us. We all go to school together and we all hate everybody.”

Ian laughed and said, “Well, let’s shake anyway.”

“Like a couple of dogs,” Vaughan said. He had on his yellow shirt with the bell peppers.

“Yeah, but don’t piss on me or sniff me just yet,” Ian said with a grin as he took Vaughan’s hand. “Nice to finally meet you guys.”

Mackenzie said, “Yeah,” and nodded stupidly. He just kept on saying, “yeah,” until Vaughan shoved him and said, “are you simple or something?







“WELL,” IDA SAID, CROSSING HER arms over her breasts, “they lost... Again.”

“Let’s have a party,” said Madeleine. She looked at Tina who said, “sounds like a good enough reason to celebrate for me.”

“I’m sure your father will understand that,” Cedric commented drily as he began to pick up the litter they had made.

“I’m sure he won’t,” Tina said, “that’s why I’m not telling him. Or mother.”

“God, not Aily,” Ida muttered.

Vaughan went off to find Mackenzie.















Tina and Madeleine were marching confidently, feeling like bitches on their way to the battered red LTD when Rodder Gonzales, in his mud grimed white uniform, and taller even than Madeleine, crossed their path on his way to the locker room.

“Yes?” said Madeleine.

“I didn’t know you were at the game,” Rodder told her.

“Well, I was. I’m glad I came,” Madeleine said.

“Yeah,” Rodder said, dubiously; frowning.

“I’d rather see you lose than hear about it.”

“Look, Maddy, I didn’t plan to fight with you.”

“Good, I don’t feel like it.”

“I just wanted to stop and say hi.”

“Well, you’ve said it.”

Rodder frowned and banged the crown of his helmet into the palm of his hand.

“You know, I don’t even know why I try with you anymore.”

Madeleine just turned around and went toward the LTD Tina had already revved up.

Rodder’s narrowed eyes followed her, and then he headed for the locker room.

He almost didn’t notice Ashley waiting by the door to the gymnasium, still in her red and white cheerleading uniform.

“Is Madeleine still being a bitch?” Ashley asked him.

Rodder frowned and said, “Ash, I really don’t think that’s any of your... I-- Madeleine’s being herself.”

Ashley raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Well, I’m being myself too when I say that was a really good game you played today.”

“We still lost, Ashley.”

“That’s cause you had morons like Ben and Rick to screw it up. With my father coaching and you quarterbacking there’s no reason we should have lost.”

“And your brother just started today.”

“Yeah,” Ashley shrugged. “Ross isn’t bad.”

“He’ll be great,” Rodder said.

“You’re better. Good game.”

Rodder took a breath, helmet between his hands, “Yeah,” he said. “I gotta go hit the showers.”

“All right,” Ashley bit her bottom lip and nodded knowingly, but as Rodder opened the door to the gymnasium and shook his head, he couldn’t figure out what it was she was supposed to know.



Father Ralph Hanley was driving down Main Street toward the liquor store with Cedric when his friend tugged at his sleeve and shouted.

“What, Ced?”

“Look,” he jecked the priests head away from the road.

“Cedric!--Oh my... Shit, here we go again!”

They pulled over to the curb and Ralph got out of the car. He walked around and asked Cedric, “Are you gonna help?”

“Why do you need me help to wrangle a senile priest off the corner of Main and Randall?”

Ralph turned to look at the old travesty, and then back to Cedric.

“He’s naked. I don’t have anything to grab onto.”

Cedric grunted and climbed out of the car following his friend who was already running down the street.

“He’s eighty-five,” Cedric shouted, “find a wrinkle and grab on.”



Rodder was stepping out of the shower and toweling his bald head when he heard Bone and Dice tumble downstairs into the locker room, swearing.

“What?”

“Our tires are slashed. So are your’s Rod!”

“Shit!” they heard from the basketball court.

Rodder had stopped toweling himself, and stood dripping on the concrete floor.

Rick Shaker came downstairs.

“My tires!”

Rod dried off and pulled his jeans and tee shirt on as soon as possible. He pulled on his sandals and followed his friends out into the parking lot.

“Shit!” Dice was swearing over and over again, “Shit!”

Rodder didn’t say a word, he just got down on his hams and looked at his tires in disbelief.

“I’m calling Coach,” Bone said.

“What’s that gonna do?” Rodder muttered, and went back toward the gymnasium. He’d left his gym bag downstairs.

“Madeleine Fitzgerald did this!” Bone shouted, coming after him.

“You don’t know that,” Rodder told him tiredly.

“Yes I do.”

Rodder was too tired to fight. He just walked back into the main lobby, passing the trophy cases.







“PROMISE ME!”

“No,” said Cedric.

“Ralph ignored him as he closed the varnished door on Father Brumbaugh’s room, “that when I’m old you won’t let me walk through the streets of Jamnia naked.”

“Hopefully,” Cedric said, looking around the living room of the rectory, “when you’re old you’ll have the since to go back to the monastery and quit trying to run a church.”

Ralph shrugged and plopped down in the chair, legs apart.

“Are you coming back ot the house?” said Cedric.

“I guess I have to. We took my car.”

Cedric lit Ralph a cigarette. The priest inhaled and looked out of the wide window. A car was coming down Eberly Street.

“I just want to finish this first. And think.” Ralph muttered, smoke rising from his nostrils.

Cedric nodded, stood up and told him, “I’ll go and think in the church until you’re done.”











Rodder humphed, sighed and sat down in the locker room for a long time, breathing in and out. It had been Madeleine, and he was truly pissed off about that, but not pissed off enough to admit that he was sure it was Madeleine. He wanted to protect her, but wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to protect her from.

Rodder swore, stood up and stretched and slung his gymbag over his shoulder then headed up the stairs out of the locker room.

“Ash,” his voice was a gasp of surprise.

“Bone told me your car had... trouble,” Ashley smiled. She was out of her uniform now, in jeans and pink top. “He and Dice went home with Cindy Lyman. Rick walked. I told them to go on and I’d drop you off at home.”

“I don’t live close to you,” Rodder said.

“You don’t live far. Come on.”

Rodder sighed and said, “Alright. Let’s go.”



“You know,” Madeleine said, sitting on the porch swing with Tina and Ida, “I almost wanted to talk to Rodder. I could pretty much forgive him.”

“It’s the eyes,” said Tina, gesturing with her cigarette.

“Goddamn it, it’s always the eyes,” said Ida, which led the two girls to believe the older woman was talking about men in general.

“He’s got these eyes,” Tina admitted, “that say, ‘Hey, I’m sensitive. Let’s work it out.’”

“Which is why I didn’t look into them,” declared Madeleine.

“Well, if you ever think about taking him back,” Tina said, “just remember him and Ashley.”

“Um?” Ida raised an eyebrow.

Madeleine sighed. “That whole thing was stupid. This summer was stupid.”

“Well,” said Martina, “I’m sure he’s over Ashley now.”



They stopped fooling around, and Rodder commanded Ashley in a voice thick with lust, “Pull over to the side of the road.”

She obeyed and between hard kisses and sucking, hands under clothing, Ashley’s voice came out smothered by Rod’s mouth, shocked into high notes and moans by his hands

“Wasn’t it good this summer? It was good!” Her voice was fierce as she kissed his mouth his eyes, kissed the top of his shaven head, placed her hands under his tee shirt.

Rodder didn’t say anything.

Ashley stopped. They were in a tangle in the passenger seat, Rodder under her.

“That Madeleine’s just a bitch,” Ashley said. “I like to have fun. She wants to have fun and be a bitch. I can’t afford to be a jealous bitch.” She started to kiss Rodder. A car shot past.

“It’s just playing around to you,” Rodder shook his head and took a breath, regaining some control. “I gave up my girlfriend for playing around with you.”

“And whaddo you have to give up now?” she said, lifting up his shirt. Rodder’s hand moved to pull his tee shirt down. Ashley lifted it up again.

“You didn’t answer me. You did it this summer cause you wanted to find out what was out there past Madeleine Fitzgerald and she wanted to find out what was out there past you and she did and you did and you can again. So let’s go, Rod.” She started to work at his belt. “Holy shit!” Ashley said reaching into his shorts. “I forgot. They don’t call you Rod for nothing.”

Rod was embarrassed, and then thrilled. This time he did not resist her when she raised up his shirt. Ashley started kissing down his chest.

“You don’t have any shame do you?” he tried to sound reprimanding as Ashley undid his jeans.

“What for?”

Rodder gestured toward the big red barn about thirty feet away in the middle of the grassy field.

“Let’s at least get off the road,” he said.





“SO DO YOU WANT MY ADVICE?” Tina asked Madeleine when the Linus Roache Fan Club had a special meeting on a Saturday night.

“If I say, ‘No--’ ”

“Then you’ll get it anyway.”

“Well then out with it.”

“This is what I say,” she looked around at her brother and Vaughan to make sure they agreed, “Since Rodder obviously wants you--still--and you still want him; let’s admit it, I say be cold for only about another week.”

“I say till Wednesday,” Vaughan differed.

“Wednesday might be good,” Tina allowed. “And then give him the eye. Talk to him. Say maybe you were a little hasty.”

“What?”

“Maybe,” Tina said at the look on Madeleine’s face. “Or don’t. The question is--do you want him back?”

“A little,” Madeleine said, sinking into the sofa.

Tina eyed her.

“Alright, I do, damnit!”

“Well, then we’ll get him, “ her friend said. “I bet he’s at home wondering why he ever let my sister play with his head. Probably thinking about why he let you go.”

Vaughan shook his head. “He’s probably thinking about who the hell slashed his tires.”



Rodder had reverse straddled the driver’s seat and it was pushed back so that Ashley was at an uncomfortable angle. The setting sun was hot on his back and ass, Ashley’s thighs were wrapped around his sides and her hands were frantically caressing his torso. He was hitting her harder and harder.

“Shit, Rod! Shit! That’s it! That’s it!” she grunted, raking his ass, pulling him in.

Rod bit into her shoulder and pumped harder and harder, viciously muttering, “Fuck me! Fuck me!”

He rode her and rode her until she started to cry, each cry quicker and quicker with each thrust. He started to moan with her, in rhythm. They shouted together until his body straightened in a rictus and he came.

For a few moments he lay on top of Ashley, mouth dry, groin wet. He pulled out of her and began pulling his underwear and his jeans up, he sat down in the passenger seat. The car smelled like sex, but he wasn’t sure he’d done what he had just done.

“God, I hurt,” Ashley said, triumphantly, taking the hair out of her face. “That was one hell of a workout. I’ll take you home, now.”

Rodder Gonzales strapped on his seat belt. He was sticking to his underwear and he was still hard. He was thinking that this was the perfect end to an already stupid and defeated day.





Sam Cooke was singing from the CD player:



Sugar dumpling!

You’re my baby!

I love you in every way way way way!

Sugar dumpling! You’re my baby!

My love for you grows

everyday!



In the large country kitchen, Cedric took one of Ida’s cigarettes and Vaughan led Mackenzie across the kitchen in an old dance step.

“It ain’t Jackie Wilson,” Cedric said. “But it ain’t bad.”

“You always did overrate Jackie,” Ralph said, ashing into Ida’s tray.

“Don’t say a word against him,” Cedric said. “Or we’ll have to fight.”

Mackenzie swung out of the dance step and stood like a dog with his ear cocked.

“What?” said Vaughan.

“Someone is at the door,” Mackenzie said.

This time they heard the pounding despite Sam Cooke, and as he went into a softer song, Cedric realized someone was at the door.

He came into the living room. Tina and Madeleine were on the couch sipping the daquiris they’d talked Cedric into letting them have.



If you ever change your mind

about leaving

leaving me behind

oh oh

bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin’

bring it on home to me, oh yeah

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah



you know I laughed

when you left

but now I know I’ve only hurt myself....







Cedric opened the large door.

“Kevin, come on in!”

On the couch in the living room, Tina only sat up a little straighter and dipped the ashes from her cigarette to acknowledge her father.

Kevin Foster stood with his red ball gap in his hands, a serious expression on his face and said, “Mr. Fitzgerald--”

Cedric raised an eyebrow.

“Cedric, can I talk to you in private?”

“Somewhere in this house, Kevin? There must be a private room. Or would you like the porch?”

“Porch is fine.”

“Girls, turn the music down,” Cedric said, and went out on to the porch, closing the door behind him. Kevin sat down on the porch rail.

“What can I do for you, Kevin?”

Kevin’s tongue rolled around inside his mouth, and then the younger man’s blue eyes looked up at Cedric and he said, “Cedric. My boys-- the boys on my team. They think...”

“Yes,” Cedric,” said.

“Aw, don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“The yes thing,” Kevin broke into one of his shy smiles. “It makes me feel like it’s high school all over again, and I’m trying to explain to Mr. Fitzgerald why my assignment isn’t in on time.”

“I don’t remember you ever having any late assignments. Anyway,” Cedric told him, “that was all a very long timr ago. Now, what’s up?”

“Some of the boys got their tires slashed and they think Madeleine did it. Bo-- one of them--”

“Bone,” said Cedric.

“One of them.”

“Bone Mc. Arthur,” Cedric said. “I’m not that stupid, Kevin.”

Kevin parted his hands, dropping his ball cap and shrugged as if to say that he knew Cedric wasn’t that stupid.

“Well,” Cedric said, “I think Bone wasted you a trip, Kevin. Madeleine was with me the whole day. And I think you might have asked why Madeleine would slash his tires.”

Kevin picked up his cap and slipped it over his spiky, brown hair.

“I know,” Kevin said. “He was just so insistent and bent out of shape. You know?”

“Um hum,” Cedric said. “Well, can I get you a drink or some food, or will this be goodnight?”

Kevin stood up. “This better be goodnight. I should get back home. Not really fair to leave Aily with all those kids. Mackenzie is over here, isn’t he?”

“That he is. In the kitchen.”

“Well,” Kevin looked as if he was about to say more. But there was nothing more to say.



Cedric went straight to the kitchen; his daughter and Tina followed him.

“What?” Madeleine said.

Cedric took cheese out of the refrigerator and a cutting board and began to unwrap the rectangle saying, “Vaughan, get up and put in some Jackie. I think I’ll need it now.”

Vaughan shot up out of his chair followed by his best friend.

“What, Daddy?” said Madeleine.



The stereo thundered a staccato blast of trumpets and then Jackie Wilson cried,



What!

Get out on the floor

I say let’s dance some more!



Put your hand on your hip

and let your backbone slip

and workout!

Awwwwwww!

Baby work out!



“Kevin Foster says that some of the boys on the football team called him and said you slashed their tires.”

“Oh, shit!” said Tina, forgetting herself and then pulling a strand of black hair over her mouth.

“What did you say?” Madeleine.

“I said, don’t be ridiculous, she was with me all day, and then I sent him home.”

Madeleine said nothing.

“I completely put out of my mind the meat cleaver you snuck into the game with,” Cedric continued. “Tina, fetch me the wine--the open one--the Chardonnay.”

“Do you want me to confess?” Madeleine said.

“How many cars did you fuck up?”

Madeleine was quiet before she said, “About five.”

“Twenty slashed tires? You know how much your average tire costs?”

Madeleine shook her head.

“Between twenty and forty dollars--on the cheap end of things.”

Madeleine decided to remain quiet. Tina set the bottle of cold wine on the counter.

“Thank you, Martina,” said Cedric. “Maddy, pull the crackers from up there.”

When she had, Cedric turned around and said, “Now, I don’t know what those boys did, but I suppose it was pretty nasty, and I don’t think you’re walking around with a stash of money big enough to buy twenty new tires. I might be, but I don’t want to spend it on my own car even. So that’s my way of saying you might want to keep this to yourself.”

Madeleine took a breath, decided not to smile and said, “All right, Daddy.”

“Take a swig of this.” He uncorked the bottle and gave it to his daughter. “You need it a little more than me.”

“Dad--”

“DO NOT--,” Cedric said, “Daddy me right now!”





i v.





When I was real little, my dad’s sister would come over here a lot. She was a drunk and her accent came out the more she drank. She was a bitter old hag and I remember one night when I was about seven she said , ‘Hey, Hey, Roderigo! You’ll be like all the rest. Men are bastards! Bastards! They get guided between what’s between their legs! All the time. They just can’t help it!”

And she laughed and made a little jab at my crotch. I was sitting down and I closed up my legs, trying to trap what was there. I never showed what was there again until the night i lost virginity and all that time and afterward what she said made me embarrassed of that part of my body, and of being a man, doomed to be a bastard. That’s when I hated my Aunt Luisa. I haven’ t thought about all that in so long. But tonight it comes back because tonight I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I don’t think I’ve ever really understood what that means until now.

What can I say? The car that I worked so hard to get is sitting in the school parking lot with four slashed tires because my ex-girlfriend slashed them. And, what’s more, for good measure, she decided to slash up four other cars as well. And the whole time I’m saying, “Guys! Guys! She didn’t do it. We don’t know who did it,” I’m thinking--that bitch did it. that bitch jacked my car up.

And I’m a little bit proud.

I deserve it. I see her, and I want to talk. She won’t have a word with me, except to start a fight. If I wasn’t so tired and so pissed off after the game, I would have fought too. And if that Tina Foster hadn’t been around--we would have fought. We would have fought and then maybe we would have wrestled and then maybe... But I’m fantasizing now.

It’s the fantasizing that got me into trouble. I thought my aunt was right--that it was my dick. You know what they say--your dick’s got a mind of it’s own. But it doesn’t. My dick doesn’t have a mind at all. I have a mind and I have this mind under the mind and it gets turned on and I get hard and the more I think about what I shouldn’t the more I want to do what I shouldn’t and then my dick’s like a compass. It’s like-- bad pussy this way! Come on over. Here it is boy! Stick it in here. Stick it in!

Which makes it sound like I’m a really big cheat or like I’m just a big dog. Not like my Dad. Or not like Dice and Bone for that matter. I’ve only had one mistake which I’ve committed several times in the last few months--Coach Foster’s daughter.

Ashley is the one that makes a lie out of girls being all simple and generous and just wanting to cuddle. Ashley’s a slut. I know. She wants to fuck. And she knows when to fuck. She never came around until she knew me and Madeleine were having problems. Then, all of a sudden, there was Ashley, and she knew just what to say. She didn’t even talk to my dick. She talked to my ego. She told me how unappreciated I was, what a good man I was. I had such nice biceps, nice shoulders. She loved my eyes. I was smart too. All football players aren’t smart, you know, not just anyone could be quarterback, if they paid more attention to you, if they could just work hard as you, we would have a championship by now... All that bullshit.

Then, after that, -she started with the sex business.

And I was convinced that something that only took five minutes--and this is going to sound bad, but I didn’t plan on it taking any more than five minutes--couldn’t possibly harm what I had with Madeleine. We weren’t having sex anyway. We were hardly talking. I didn’t love Ash. I didn’t want to make love to Ash so there was no problem. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to do it and get it done with.

So I did it, and I spent the entire summer paying for it.

The world is small. Jamnia is smaller, and Madeleine knew almost before I pulled out. She walked up to me in school and smacked me straight across the face. She left a red mark. I deserved it. Then she went on her systematic campaign to fuck all of my so called friends. Which is when I decided it was okay to keep fucking Ashley.

So then here comes the disgusting part. Okay, you’re right, it’s already disgusting. I never “fucked” until Ashley. Neither did Maddy. So here the two of are--and we love each other, and because we love each other, instead of working it out we decide to fuck whoever we can. Me--I never planned to be with Ash more than once. Just wanted to try it once. I spent the whole summer humping her like a dog. It’s impossible to make love to Ashley Foster. It’s impossible to feel good about yourself when you’re fucking her, when your day revolves around the fact that you’ve either just stuck it in or you’re going to and you wonder if you’ll ever make love again.

And, of course, there is one person you would love to make love to. But every time you’re messing around with this other slut-- making a slut out of yourself-- you know that’s one step closer to making it impossible as hell to get back with the one you love. So you go out and fuck again. Vicious circle. And maybe you call the one you love... You know. She picks up. You don’t know what to say. You hang up.

I hate my life!



“I don’t feel like going home,” Tina complained through a stretch and a yawn.

“You usually don’t. Stay here for the night.”

“We get to having a good time, then we’ve got a little liquor in us and it’s like, hell, who wants to walk to Logan Street? And Grandma left hours ago.”

Madeleine laughed, as she went up the stairs ahead of her friend.

“What?” said Tina.

“I remember when we were kids. I didn’t know the difference between your house and mine we were moving around so much. All I knew was you and Vaughan and Mackenzie were there. So it had to be home. And Daddy,” Madeleine started to chuckle, “with those damned cheap biscuits from the freezer aisle. It was the only thing he could cook.”

“Biscuit cookies, biscuit elephant ears, biscuit bread sticks--”

The two girls grabbed each other and cried out, “Biscuit pot pie!”

The phone rang and Madeleine ran to the landing to answer it.

“Hello,” she said. “Hello? Bastard.” She turned to Tina. “I hate it when people do that, just call and don’t say anything and then hang up.”



“Thank God,” said Mackenzie, stripping down to his briefs, “a breeze.”

Vaughan turned over and buried his head in his pillow.

“Vaughan?”

“Um hum?” he said from under the pillow.

Mackenzie flicked off the light and crawled into bed beside his friend, “There’re things I haven’t really thought about... until recently.”

“Like,” Mackenzie could tell that Vaughan wanted to sleep.

“I’ll be quick about it.”

“Thank you.”

“We’re almost sixteen, but we dance together and sleep in the same bed.”

Vaughan pulled the pillow from over his head.

“Well, now you make me feel nasty. We grew up together for God’s sake! We’ve always slept in the same bed. I think Aileen breast fed me or bottle fed me. After my mother died.”

“I know,” Mackenzie said. “But like I said, I don’t think about it. Then Dad knocked on the door and I was thinking, ‘It’s a good thing he didn’t catch me dancing with Vaughan.”

“Well, if it turns you on or something--”

“Look I didn’t say that.”

“Well what the hell are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything,” Mackenzie said. “I’m just. I was just saying. It’s not about you. It’s about me. Growing up and everything. Trying to sort out what’s innocent. What’s not. What guys should do.” He muttered, “What they shouldn’t.

“Oh, God, Kenzie,” Vaughan said flicking the light on. He was in his pajama pants, his white tee shirted arms wrapped around his knees. “I don’t even think about it. I haven’t thought about it until just now. And now you have me sitting up here thinking I’m going to hell for having my brother--or the closest thing I have to a brother do what he has done for his whole life. If the bed was bigger and Madeleine wasn’t older then she and Tina would be here too.”

“Vaughan, I’m sorry,” Mackenzie said. “Can we just drop it?”

“You’re the one who picked it up.”

“Yeah,” Mackenzie looked distracted. “But... I don’t want to bother with it anymore. Alright? I’m sorry I said anything. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Mackenzie reached over his friend and flicked out the light.

“Kenzie?” Vaughan said after a few seconds.

“Yeah, Vaughan?”

“Is there anything you want to tell me?”

Mackenzie was quiet for a long while and then he said, “I don’t think so. Not yet, leastways.”

“All right,” Vaughan said and willed himself to go to sleep.











Today is the first day of the rest of my insanity.

It is my very own best friend who is making me insane.

I don’t remember any time when Mackenzie wasn’t around. Our parents, I know, were not close in age--almost a generation apart. The Fosters were almost too young to be having kids and my mother and father were almost too old. In fact my mother was, and in too bad of shape or something. She died when I was born.

When the Fosters were in high school, my father was their teacher and I think Ida said something about him being the reason Tina and Ashley were born. At that same time my mother was pregnant--and surprised to be pregnant--with Madeleine. Maddy was born a little before Tina and Ashley and the doctor told Mother she should probably never have children again.

But not three years later, the Fosters--still teenagers--were working on their second set of twins-. They were newlyweds now. And Mother was pregnant again.

She did not make it.

Uncle Ralph always says that my father did very well during that whole time. He says that Cedric is the kind of person who can get over things very quickly and do what has to be done. He said that he was devastated, but not for long. Devastation is a total destruction and nothing can be done until the destruction if over. With two children to raised there was just no time for the luxury of it.

For me? I can remember the last time I cried about not having a mother. I was so angry. it was so unfair. And everything else. And then in the middle of me crying, it was like God said to me, “It’s some people with mothers who would love to be in your place,” and I thought about Aileen Foster and I thought that I’d rather be raised alone by Cedric than by Kevin and Aileen--who are hardly thirty yet and scream at each other like cats and dogs. And I thought about all the other people who don’t have mothers. Because you know, when you cry for something you don’t have, that’s jealousy, usually. Then you look at all the other people who don’t have it and a voice says, “What the hell makes you think you have a right to this?” And you stop going, “Why me?” and then you say, “Well, why the hell not me?” And you move on.



Believe it or not , this does all relate to that dear old brother-mine, Mackenzie Allyn Foster.



I think if he wasn’t so good--not nice and polite and sycophantic (he makes fun of me for using big words)--but real good, I would hate him. And if I didn’t know him I would hate him. But from the moment the Fosters started having kids and learned to rely on my parents for help (and mutual support) we’ve always been mixed up with Tina and Kenzie. For some reason we never mixed with Ash or Lindsay--which is fine with me and probably fine with them. They used to come over as little kids, but as we got older, and more kids came to the Foster house it was only Kenzie and Tina who continued to live between our house and the one on Logan Street. The Fosters didn’t get that big house until we were about ten. Up until then it made all the sense in the world for Kenzie and Tina, some of the oldest out of six kids--to stay with us in the large house my father shared with just us.

We never bathed together. Cedric didn’t approve of that. He said that this was plebeian. I get all my big words from him. But we did sleep in the same bed. And then Madeleine decided she had to have her own room, and then when the Fosters got the house on Logan Street, Tina got the attic, Kenzie got his old room, but never went home. So things never changed.

Not until last night when he starts going on about us sleeping in the same bed and all this shit. And I’m thinking he’s thinking I might be gay. Then I start to wonder if Mackenzie is afraid that he is gay. His father and his younger brother not to mention the Colonel--God, let’s not mention the Colonel--could have put some crazy macho bullshit in his head and suddenly the things that we’ve done our whole life are under question. And then when he questions them I question them too.

I had never thought of us as grown men, and I don’t think of myself as one. Puberty is hopelessly late in coming for me. But after what Mackenzie says I actually see him for the first time this morning.

He buys real underwear, not tidy whities and this new thing he’s into is called a low rise or high or something like that. At any rate it could be called a tidy-red and it doesn’t have a door in the front. It’s like a Speedo, I guess. He climbs out of bed and I look at him and realize he is nearly six feet tall. He’s getting facial hair. He’s got large feet and hands, veins coming out in them like a grown-up. He’s scratching his jaw cause he needs to shave. He’s got body hair, a little. And he smells a little, not bad, but like armpits. No, like sweat. like grown up people smell.

He’s talking to me and I notice that his voice is deeper.

“Vaughan? Are you listening? What’s wrong with you?”

I sit up in bed and pull my knees to my chest. I am thinking how I never thought of it before. Mackenzie may not be a man yet--but he’s not a boy either. We’re not children, and I start to think there is something horribly strange about our arrangement and that when he strides out of my room to take a leak I can still smell him in my bed.

I don’t tell him any of this.

Instead I tell it to Maddy.



“I was wondering when you would notice all of that,” Madeleine told him, turning her head as she curled her hair in the mirror of large second story bathroom.

“And hoping we’d stop?”

“Stop what?” Madeleine said, impatiently. “I was wondering and hoping it never happened--that you would never get... conscious.”

When Vaughan looked at his sister more confused than ever, she dropped the curlers and said, “Let me explain.

“Men get on my nerves. Always so damn... self conscious,” a click of the curlers. “Always so... let’s not do this or it’ll make us look gay. Let’s not do this and that. And you know what the crazy thing is?” Madeleine turned around. “It’s always the lovely things and the affectionate things that you all--that men--get rid of so that no one ‘will think we’re gay.’ Between Kevin and Colonel and the football team Kenzie must be about to lose his mind. I’m surprised they don’t monitor the way he walks.”

“The Fosters aren’t that bad,” Vaughan said, cautioning Madeleine to move aside so he could take out the toothpaste.

“Like hell,” Madeleine disagreed, closing the medicine cabinet door. “Bunch of goddamn homophobes.”

“Good morning to you too,” Cedric said.

“Oh,” Madeleine said, caught off guard by her father’s head in the door. “You look rough, Daddy.”

“Church isn’t for an hour. I’ve got plenty of time to make myself look decent. What are we talking about?”

“Among many things, Colonel Foster.”

Cedric smiled coldly. “Still a subject that kills appetite, ten years into the grave.” Cedric took one of Madeleine’s cigarettes, lit it, and left the bathroom.

“There’s a game,” Madeleine went on in a lower voice, while Vaughn spat into the basin and turned around for the Listerine, “that the soccer team used to play called Bread and Butter.”

“Hum?” Vaughan swished mouthwash around in his mouth.

Madeleine explained while Vaughn gargled and spat. “They would have parties. All the girls would leave, and then, when they were gone the guys would get in a circle, put a piece of bread in the middle. Then they’d all whip their shit out and start wacking away--”

“I don’t believe you!

“Wacking away until they came on the bread. Last person to come had to eat the bread.”

“That’s nasty!”

“I know.”

“You made it up.”

“That I did not. And,” Madeleine went on. “Shit like that still goes on at our little Jamnia High School. Or elephant walk where the same dudes get rid of their girls, make circle and link themselves hand to dick and sing and play and beat each other off. Dudes. Remember Shawn Harrison, he went to BGSU?”

Vaughan nodded.

“Said, sophomore year he went to an alley, stuck his dick out and had some gay guy blow him. Then said,” Madeleine unplugged the curlers, “look, I’m not gay. Sometimes I just need it from another guy. Which sounds gay to me. The whole point I’m trying to make-- fasten the back of this dress up for me, Vaughan-- is that dudes will do all this awful shit with each other, but someone will slip it to your mind that for you and Mackenzie to share a bed like you done did for almost sixteen years-- or drink off the same pop or hug each other or remind each other that you love each other is gay-. And since this is the Mid West--gay means bad.

“How do I look?” Madeleine said.

“Like you’re on the prowl at 11:45 Mass”

Madeleine smiled impishly. “Rodder might be there.”

“And you want him to see what he won’t get?”

Madeleine grinned, “Vaughan, you know me so well.”

Madeleine was quiet for a moment and then she said, “You know, Vaughan. If the whole thing concerns you so much, maybe you should talk to Kenzie and clear it up. Is he still here?”

“No, he had to go home and get ready for Mass. He’s the altar boy.”



The organ solo was blaring over their heads at Our Lady of Jamnia. Vaughan was sitting in his least favorite part of the pew, the edge that faced the center aisle, and Mass was going to start late this Sunday. Ralph was not even in vestments. They’d gotten a concelebrant to come up from the monastery and under one of the stations of the Cross the two men were whispering.

Ralph got up to change into robes and Vaughan genuflected and went to the vestibule of the church to find Mackenzie, who was standing with the brass crucifix in a white robe instructing two younger boys from the Catholic school.

“What’s up, Vaughan?”

Vaughan looked at the two boys. They looked at him.

“Go away,” Vaughan said. “Move up to the baptismal font and make yourselves useful.”

They continued looking at him.

“Now,” he snapped, and they moved.

Through the open vestibule doors, Vaughan could see Ralph in his white and green robes coming down the aisle while the organ solo blared to a close. Wind and sunlight came from Main Street along with the noise of cars and they all stole Vaughan’s attention from the moment. Then he came back to himself.

“Well, now, I don’t suppose there is much time to talk,” Vaughan said. “But Kenzie, can you tell me what the-.... What has got you so worried?”

“About?””

“Us. You. You’re wondering about...”

“What Vaughan?” Mackenzie looked anxious. Now the cantor was greeting the congregation and telling everyone to open their hymnals to number.... Ralph looked at the boys as if to say, “Get a move on,” and then, in his white and green vestments turned around.

“Why are you so worried about being gay?” Vaughan asked Mackenzie suddenly.

The other boy almost dropped the crucifix. Then he said, regaining his calm: “Because I am, Vaughan.”

And at that the organ launched into the opening him. Vaughan stared at this best friend. Then Mackenzie hugged him and said, “You’re my brother and I love you, and I mean it just that way with no strings attached. Now go sit down, Mass is about to start.”

Vaughan, dazed, went past Ralph and the other altar boys, he circled the church while the song began and the procession made a straight way to the altar. He could barely hear the choir singing:



“Come ye faithful, raise the strain

Of

triumphant gladness

God has brought his Israel,

into joy

from sadness

loosed from Pharoah’s bitter yoke

Jacob’s sons and daughters

Led them with unmoistened foot

through

the

Red Sea waters!





THE FOURTH PERIOD BELL WAS ringing when Vaughan stopped in the midst of the crowd.

“What are you looking at?” his friend asked.

“The poster for the musical. They’re doing Showboat this year,” Vaughan said. Mackenzie came up and looked at the poster with Vaughan.

“Are you gonna do it?”

Vaughan shook his head. “Madeleine’ll be in it. One thespian in the house is enough. You should try out, though.”

Mackenzie raised his eyebrow.

“You’ve got a good enough voice and you’ve been talking about putting yourself forward and doing new things. You can’t put yourself forward much more than getting up on stage and singing in front of a thousand of your closest peers.”

“Yeah,” muttered Mackenzie. “That’s the part that sort of turns me off.”

“I think you should try out.” A new voice said. They both turned around.

“Really?” Mackenzie said to the girl.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I think you’d be good in it. I’d love to see you on stage.”

She winked and was gone.

“Who was that?” Mackenzie mouthed.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Vaughan said. “I guess one of your many admirers.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“Half the girls in the sophomore class, and maybe junior and freshmen would let you wipe the floor with them.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That’s because you don’t hear,” Vaughan said. Then he shook his head, “If only they knew.”

“That’s the first time you’ve said anything,” they were heading to the back porch of the school.

“I can assure you it’s not the first time I’ve said anything.”

“About me, chucklehead,” Mackenzie said. He whispered as they pushed open the glass doors before the parking lot, “about being gay.”

Madeleine and Claudia were sitting on the lowest steps with Martina and they looked up and then kept talking while Tina twirled the rosary around her neck and shouted out, “You tired motherfuckers!” at no one in particular. “Yeah, that’s what I thought!” she took a drag off her cigarette.

“I guess I don’t know what to say,” Vaughan said.

Mackenzie touched his friend on the arm, “It doesn’t change stuff... Does it?”

“No,” Vaughan shook his head. “I don’t guess.” he took his cigarettes from the breast pocket of the blue bowling shirt that read Larry and said, “I don’t even get it.”

The doors opened, more smokers came out.

“Get what?” Martina looked up.

“Life,” Vaughan supplied.

“Hey, Tina!” TJ Ryan called out, coming out of his Firebird with two other basketball players, “love the hair!”

Martina stood up and walked the length of the bottom stoop with her cigarette smoldering, “How ‘bout you love me telling you to kiss my ass you inbred buck teeth child molesting white trash, hillbilly motherfuckers! How ‘bout that?” Tina took a drag from her cigarette and smiled, satisfied, “How you like that?”

“That bitch is crazy?” the guy smoking beside Vaughan said in admiration.

“That bitch is my sister,” Mackenzie said, turning to see that it was Ian Cane. His little cousin was sitting on the steps, looking dazed and anxious.

Ian grinned and touched the bit of beard under his lower lip.

“I know, but it’s still unbelievable as fuck,” Ian squatted and ashed his cigarette on the steps.

Tina went on shouting:

“Yeah, that’s right, asshole-! Eat this!”







Roy hated gym class because he was convinced that everyone hated him.

“You alright, Roy?” Coach Foster said as the boy came up from the locker room.

“Yeah, Mr. Foster.”

Everyone except Coach Foster. He seemed to care, or maybe he was just like that with everyone, making everyone feel like he was watching out for them.

Kevin smiled and said, “You can call me Coach. I’m not dead yet.”

“Yes, si--Coach,” Roy remembered, and then dared to smile back at his gym teacher. Everyone says take him for biology. He’s an easy A.

“Alright!” said Kevin. “Who wants to be team captains today? Julius. Ron? Alright. Pick your teams.”

Kevin began watching Julius and Ron select who they wanted and when half the kids were gone and Roy was still standing with the ones not selected, Kevin frowned and thought, “I should never do this again.”

It was down to Roy and Irving Merrick, the fat myopic kid from the trailer park whom nobody seemed to like when Ron said, raising an eyebrow and crossing his bony knees as he pivoted, “I guess I’ll take Cane.”

The light went in and out of Roy’s blue eyes. Shoulders sagging the boy went to Ron’s team.

When the kids had started playing basketball and Roy was trying to look like he knew what he was doing, he looked over to Coach Foster, standing legs wide apart in his red shorts, arms crossed and wondered what the man was smiling about.

Kevin Foster had drifted off into one of his fantasies.

He was taking a gun and popping caps in the heads of Julius Mather and Ron Lauder. Over and over again....



Cedric Fitzgerald had decided to clean house today, and realized that it had been about two weeks, and two weeks in a house where people ran in and out constantly could be a very big job to pick up after. He had spent the whole morning in the living room cursing the high ceilings and the molding, sneezing and scratching his eyes as he took the duster and wiped down the old ceiling fans. This house looked ancient. It was ancient. It was warm today. Madeleine had been right; they did need central air. But how would they put it in and how much of the house would they have to tear apart? Still, if they had to do a major rennovation, they could afford it.

This was how Cedric did all of his thinking--during the bi- weekly house cleaning. he was thinking about what Vaughan had told him. Was Mackenzie really gay? How could he know? But that was a stupid question. That was a question Ohio people asked--and though Cedric had been born here and was reconciled to dying her as well, he tried not to ask questions Ohio people asked.

“How do you know you’re gay? You’re too young?”

But at that age Kevin and Aileen must have known they were heterosexuals, because this was when Aileen had become pregnant with Tina and Ashley. Ashley Foster certainly knew she was a heterosexual when she was fifteen going on sixteen and half the male population of Jamnia could smell it.

And Cedric had known he would probably never marry when he was fifteen, but that if he did it would be for a brief time and the woman would be exceptional. It had been a decade before he’d met Marilyn, and then he knew right away she would be his wife. And when she had died, he had also known he would never marry again.

So why couldn’t Mackenzie Foster know he was gay?

A few days back, Cedric asked his son, “What have you said to him?”

Cedric grunted--moving the old console.

Why do we have a console? He pushed it with his back. This is an antique.

“Nothing,” Vaughan said. “I’m already pretty sure that whatever I say is going to be stupid.”

Cedric had nodded. This was a wise idea.

Out on the porch Cedric knew there were other things to think about than a fifteen year old Foster’s sex life--or lack of it. He took his cigarettes and a beer--it was twelve o’clock somewhere--and went out with a notepad.

How long could he get by without publishing another book of poetry? What play would he have to write this year? Could he avoid directing anything? Would he have to go to New York? He hated New York. This is what he thought about. He thought about avoiding the East Coast.

“I would not mind directing something... a short something in Chicago,” Cedric murmured. “I would not mind not directing at all.”

Not with kids. Not right now.

A glint of gold distracted him and Cedric, Pall Mall smoldering in his right hand, notepad on his lap, looked up.

“Oh my Jesus,” he murmured.

Cedric stood up and went into the living room to ring up Our Lady of Jamnia.

“Ralph. Ralph! Are you looking for Father Brumbaugh? Well, man you better check his room. And look and see if the monstrance is missing? Yes. Yes, he’s walking down Michael Street, processing the Blessed Sacrament all by himself... And naked as a jaybird too.”



Race Cane, pulling out of the parking lot of Jamnia High School, attempted to drive and place a hand over the eyes of her son at the same time.

“Ian, don’t look,” she said, because she couldn’t cover the eyes of her nephew who sat--plainly looking--in the back seat of the car.

“Well, goddamn,” she muttered as she let him cross her path and continue down Michael Street. Suddenly he was being pursued by a frantically waving Black man with a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes in one hand, “Now I have seen it all. A naked Catholic priest.”

“How do you know?” Ian said.

“He had a monstrance,” Race said, as they went down Michael Street. She could not help that the way they were headed was parallel to the path of the priest. “Besides, it’s Father Brumbaugh. I had him when I went to Our Lady of Jamnia.”

“Well,” Ian said loftily, “I’m glad we’re Episcopalians.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Roy told Ian, his blue eyes fascinated by the spectacle of the Black man and the priest,” You still wouldn’t believe in God anyway.”



MADELEINE SAID SHE WAS EXTREMELY SORRY bumping into Rodder Gonzales.

“I didn’t mean it. I was in a hurry.” she said.

He was wearing his glasses today, and his gym bag was over his shoulder.

“That’s alright,” Rodder smiled down at her. “I’m sorry about what the goons did on Saturday.”

“You mean Bone sending Coach Foster to my house?”

“I mean all of it,” Rodder put his books into his locker and then rolled home the combination and clicked shut the lock.

“You look nice today,” Rodder said.

“It’s just jeans, Rod.”

He furrowed his brow and said, “Well, they’re nice jeans.”

“Your jeans look nice too,” she said. “And that’s all the compliment you’re getting from me.” Madeleine smiled and continued down the empty hall.

“Maddy!”

“Rod, I’m gonna be late for tryouts. In fact, I’m already late.”

“I just wanted to know... Are you seeing anyone?”

Madeleine smiled and said, “Goodbye, Rod.”

Rod was about to say, “I’ll call you.” But instead he heaved his gym bag and went the other way toward the gymnasium.



They all clapped as Mackenzie came down the steps and Jenny Lafferty shook his shoulder and said, “You were so good.”

“Thank you.”

But Tina and Madeleine were gabbling away and Mackenzie said, “Did the two of you even see me?”

“I saw you,” Vaughan said, his nose behind a copy of The Brothers Karamasov.

“I saw you too,” Martina was blinking owlishly from behind her glasses. “You were brilliant. Now sit down, we’re talking about Rodder Gonzales.”

“Martina Foster,” Mr. Stearne called from the stage.

“Well, I guess we’re not,” Tina amended, rising from her seat.

“Give ‘em hell,” Madeleine said.

Tina gave Madeleine and arch look and said, “I think that’s the only thing I can give today.”

As she walked down the aisle to the stage, Tina would not look at the seats to see who filled them. High school had been an experience in embarrassment and underachievement and she could not bear to see who was out there whom she hated or had hated her. She kept her eyes on the rafters, and then was glad her contacts weren’t in today. She took her glasses off.

“Will you be reading or singing?” Mr. Stearne asked.

Tina smiled, “Reading. Definitely reading.”

“From--?”

“Antigone.”

“Wise choice,” Vaughan muttered where he sat beside Mackenzie.

“Shh,” said his friend, chuckling.



Tina looked over the book one last time, and then, to everyone’s surprise she put it on the ground, moved to the center of the stage and hung her head. Her head was bowed so long Mr. Stearne was about to speak. Then Tina lifted her head and her eyes were suddenly wide and full of the famous Foster blue, but ancient, very, very ancient. They knew something terrible, and with an excruciating slowness that went from one end of the auditorium to the other, seeming to gaze on everything with as much mercy as the August sun. She raked her hands through her hair until it was ragged and her hands were claws and a voice came up out of her deep, deep like the earth.



“Our brother’s burial--Creon had ordained honor for one, dishonor for the other. Eteocles they say, has been entombed.” She turned and spoke to the shadow beside her. “With every solemn rite and ceremony to do him honor in the world below. But as for Polyneices....” she paused, she shook her head and moved across the stage speaking to herself, “Creon has ordered than none shall bury him, or mourn for him; he must be left to die, unwept, unburied, for hungry birds to prey to swoop and feast on his poor body...





So he has decreed,

Our noble Creon to all the citizens:

To you! To me! To me he is coming,

to make it public here, that no one may

be left in ignorance, nor does he hold it

of little moment. He who disobeys

in any detail shall be put to death

by public stoning in the streets of Thebes.

So it is now for you to show if you are worthy or unworthy of your birth!



And then Tina, having addressed the audience and the invisible figure beside her, bowed curtly, and walked off the side stage to applause.

“Oh, my God,” Madeleine said, shaking her when her friend came back.”

“Where’d you learn to... emote like that?” said Mackenzie.

Tina reddened and shrugged.

“It passes the time late nights, when I can’t sleep. You know everybody likes to play pretend.”

“Dad will want you for his next play.” Vaughan said.

“Good,” Madeleine murmured, “cause it’s probably in New York.”





“Rod, where you going?” Bone said.

“I thought I’d run in and see a little bit of the play try outs.”

“They’re still going on?”

“I think,” Rod said. “I just wanta sneak in and see a little bit.”

They were still muddy from football practice. Rod had knocked off his cleats and his helmet was under his arm. Bone and Dice followed, and Rick Shaker was about to call out something as Madeleine came up on stage, but then it was she who opened her mouth, and her voice quavered at the high end of alto as she spoke into the dark of the auditorium.

“Somewhere.... over the rainbow... way up high... there’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.”

Madeleine’s voice grew more strident:



“Somewhere

over the rainbow,

skies are blue,

and the dreams that you dare to dream

really do come true!”



They’d heard it a million times before. Who hadn’t seen The Wizard of Oz. But none of them had ever heard it sung by one young and living person, a cappella, a voice reaching out to take in every corner of a dark auditorium. And Rodder’s eyes filled up with the girl on the stage as her arms widened for the climax and then she closed off







“If birds can fly over the rainbow

why, oh why... can’t I?”



And when the applause made Rodder open his eyes he realized they’d been closed.

He looked to his left and his right. Dice, Bone, Rick, couldn’t say anything.

“Let’s go guys,” he told them, and was the first in a silent procession out of the door and to the locker room.