Chapter 6
SPRING CAME. The last cold, wet March storm was gone. Bluebonnets peeped out along the shoulders of the highways.
Through my bedroom window I could see budding trees across the street and a patch of blue sky. I wished I were out where the air was clean and good to breathe. Sullen hostility filled my room like a leaden mist.
My father threw a handful of papers to a table. They were the record of my accomplishments at college this past winter, a list of flunking grades and a bundle of hot checks he had had to make good to keep me out of jail.
"I don't know where I've failed," my father said. "I've given you every possible advantage. Can you explain yourself?"
Reluctantly I pulled my gaze from the patch of freedom outside the window and focused it on my parent. The past five years had taken nothing from him. He was still a big man with bulky shoulders. Slashes of steel gray trimmed his temples. His blue eyes could still probe right into you, find a weak spot and turn it into mush.
Fear gets to be a habit. I felt it crawling through me now, although I no longer had to worry about physical punishment. The fear had bred hate.
"No, I can't explain myself," I said. "Can you? Have you ever tried?"
His cold blue eyes tightened angrily.
"I don't want to listen to any smart remarks from you. Be careful. You're walking a high rope now." He swept his hand toward the papers on the desk. "Hot checks, D.W.I, charges, trouble with girls, trouble in school." He had heard about my patronage of Ginny. A look of angry disgust filled his eyes. "I never thought I'd father a delinquent. What is it with you anyway? Why can't you straighten out and be decent like Gordon? I never had this kind of trouble with him."
"Good old Gordon," I muttered. "A chip off the old block. A member of the team."
Anger snapped between us like sparks of electricity.
"It wouldn't hurt you to emulate your brother. And you don't have to be sarcastic about Gordon's being a member of the team. No company-or a society, either-ever ran smoothly without its people pulling together. Misfits like you only stir up trouble. But don't worry, young man-you'll learn how to get along with the rest of us, if I have to teach you the hard way. Another of those checks and you go to jail."
"Wouldn't it be a little embarrassing for a state representative to have a son in the cooler?" I inquired blandly. "Especially when the representative has hot pants for the governor's seat?"
My father had recently found a new outlet for his ambitions-politics. Last fall he had been elected representative from his district. How could he have lost? All the money in the district had been on his side.
His voice turned hoarse with rage. A vein throbbed in his forehead.
"You keep your filthy mouth clean. You're talking to your father."
"I'm glad you reminded me," I said. "Let's stop kidding each other, though-You didn't bail me out of trouble because there's any love lost between us-"
He slapped me across the mouth. There was brute strength in his big palm. The blow dazed me.
I recovered and my body stiffened and my fists doubled but I did not hit him back. Taboos run deeply. Honor thy father and thy mother....
My father's voice trembled with suppressed fury.
"I'm not going to stand here and argue with a delinquent. Now I'm going to tell you how it will be in the future. You're going to straighten out, fly right, keep your nose clean and make decent grades. I'm not going to throw money away on an education a kid doesn't appreciate. If you behave like this again, I'm going to jerk you out of school and put you to work at our plant on the coast and, by Harry, you're going to work. You'll load bauxite with the Mexican laborers. You'll sweat and break your back until you learn how to get along with people and be a responsible citizen."
I started to laugh. He was threatening me with hard work-and one of my favorite times in life had been the days I had worked my head off on Uncle Enoch's shrimp boat. Work was not what I minded. I could have passed my courses in a breeze if I'd given a damn. I might even have gone on my father's team if I could have felt he was on mine.
My father walked out after delivering his ultimatum. He slammed the door behind him. The ugly tension slowly filtered from the room. I found I could draw a free breath again.
After a while I went downstairs, walked across the campus and stood on the curb of the main drag, looking around. I felt depressed.
A red convertible swooped to the curb. The attractive brunette behind the wheel waved.
"Hi."
It was Alice. We were still going together-she had remained my chief romance the entire school year. "Hi," I said.
I opened the door and flopped in beside her. "How did it go?" she asked. I shuddered. "Ugh."
Her eyes clouded. She reached over to squeeze my hand.
"Want to tell me about it?"
"I'd just as soon not," I said. "I'd hate to vomit all over your upholstery."
"Was it as bad as that?"
"Worse," I said. "Why do we have families? Babies should be born in bottles-then let the state raise the kid."
She laughed.
"Honey, don't be bitter. All parents are not jerks."
"Well, it so happens mine are." We were silent for a moment. "I'm sorry," I apologized. "I guess I'm in a lousy mood."
"That's all right."
I admitted, "Oh, what the hell-I guess the old man has a right to be sore. I can't blame him for that. But if he'd just once try to talk to me like one human being to another-"
What was the use? Neither he nor I understood each other.
Alice asked, "Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?"
"You can take us where I can get drunk."
"Okay."
She was an agreeable girl. She handled the car expertly in traffic. Her parents had given it to her this year for her nineteenth birthday. She drove well, as she did all things conventional. And some that were out of the ordinary. She could handle a quarter horse, fly a plane or shoot the neck off a beer bottle with a .22.
We went to a place some distance from the campus, drank beer from pitchers, listened to a loud rock-and-roll combo and watched go-go girls until dark. Then we drove around under the stars with the top down, drank more beer from cans, talked about life and tried to figure out where we came from and what we were doing here and where we might wind up.
Later we went to my room. We stumbled to the day bed and became involved in a long, heated kiss.
She let me unbutton her blouse, moonlight spilling through a window into the darkened apartment gleamed like silver on her pale flesh.
I think we were partly in love and I sensed that Alice wanted to marry me. I was not ready to marry anyone. I was still too mixed up about my own life to take on another's complexities.
We made love, then fell asleep on the couch. I awoke in the early dawn, feeling stiff and cramped. Alice was curled in a ball beside me, her knees poking me in the stomach. Dawn light was soft and kind on her fiercely proud breasts. One of her hands rested on the cushion beside her face, fingers curled against her cheek. She looked sweet, young and vulnerable. Something besides a hangover tugged at my throat as I gazed down at her.