Love Songs: The Wrong Note - A Collection of Short Stories

Just Too Poor

 I was as white as a sheet, peeing my pants hot in the cold river water.

Billy was laughing his head off.

He's crazy, that Billy is.

I just know it.

Sack of wet cow dung.

Still, he laughs.

Billy assured me it was way too moist to ever set the porch on fire. He should know. Billy's the expert on such things.

We edged onto the porch with our gift. Billy was as solemn as the magi on that first Christmas night. I spotted the tiny tremble of the lace curtain and the sparkle of reflection on a crystal vase from the full moon that was hanging low above our heads. There was a slight breeze. The window was open. The radio announcer's voice was tense. All tied. Two out. Two strikes. Bottom of the ninth.

The air was hot and sticky and smelled of roses and old sweat.

It was 1957, and we were eleven years old. Old enough to know better, yet young enough to believe what we were about to do was edgy and dangerous. Not full-fledged outlaws, but I'd already had my brush with the local constabulary because I was Billy's best friend. And Billy had had his because he was crazy. Like I said. He always had been.

Billy volunteered to knock on the door.

He was fearless that way. Besides, he was the fastest runner in Lanomaker County. Our plan went off without a hitch. That is, until the reverend answered the door.

Fear took over before his common sense kicked in, and the reverend flew out the door, stomping the bag as if he was putting out the flames of hell.

Billy and I were hiding in the bushes, close enough to see, but far enough to escape, if need be. The street light near the preacher's house illuminated the scene spectacularly. The reverend looked like an actor on a stage, covered in dung and fueled by righteous indignation.

He was splattered from head to toe.

"You delinquent bastards," he said. "Billy McGill, I know you're out there! When I get my hands on you, I'm gonna wring your rusty neck!"

Billy was snickering uncontrollably from our hideout in the bushes.

"Come on," I said. "Let's scram before he calls the cops."

"Go home, Muncie," Billy said. "Forget the cops. Go home before the preacher calls your mama. Be sure to sneak into bed. Act real sleepy when your mama opens the door. Don't say a word. Just act goofy and sleepy."

I didn't stop to ask Billy if her was sure he wanted me to leave. Mama had already threatened to send me off to Rugaspath Reform School. And I knew as soon as the reverend wiped himself off enough to enter the parsonage, he'd be on the phone.

Billy had no such worries. His house had no phone, no electricity, and no running water. Mama always said that Billy and I washed where angels feared to dip their white robes. But that night, the angels winged me along, and I flew home. Stripping down to my skivvies, I hopped into bed and burrowed under the sheet.

The phone rang. Moments later, Mama flicked on the light switch in my room. I was as groggy-looking as a drunk on a weekend bender. I grunted and rubbed my eyes, careful to keep my lips totally sealed.

"Thank God," Mama breathed, turning off the light.

For a long while, I laid there, imagining Billy in the bushes all night outside the reverend's house.

1957 was the be all and end all of boyhood summers. Mickey hit his 200th homer, and Floyd took home the heavyweight title. Hoagie Wheeler got his first car, a 1932 Ford 5 window coupe. It was a rust bucket of a rattle trap with three wheels in the junk yard, but the engine turned over when he cranked it. It drank gas like a camel at a water trough, but Hoagie was one proud peacock. The fact that he had transportation that did not involve shoe soles or horse shoes made him more popular than Elvis with the girls. Even the good looking ones. And Billy, a favorite of Hoagie's, was often given free lifts to wherever he was headed. And if Billy was really lucky, a swig of moonshine on the side.

The hoo-haw of the reverend's cow patty party was forgotten. Billy and I were swimming in the river, having our once-monthly 'Saturday Soaking.'

The rusty patches on Billy's neck were particularly dark.

"Probably too much sun," he mused.

I was coughing and sputtering from having inhaled too much water and a minnow.

At least that's what I told Billy. Truth was, my bare feet had stepped on a really sharp rock and to stifle a girly scream, I'd dunked below the water. Not before inhaling and swallowing a gulp in spite of my best efforts not to. Minnow excluded. Peeing my pants included.

Billy was laughing his head off – both at me and at the memory of the reverend just nights before.

Sack of wet cow dung.

"Shoot," I said, looking around to where we'd stopped to rest from floating down the river.

I paled, not from choking down the river water, but from the realization of where we were.

"What?"

"This is the spot," I said.

"What are you talking about?" Billy asked.

He'd stopped laughing.

"This is the exact spot where they found Laurie Dawn!"

"It is not," said Billy. "Where you going, Muncie?"

I slipped out of the river and onto its banks.

"Get back here," said Billy, grabbing my wet tee shirt and pulling me down to the ground.

"Owww!" I screamed.

My palm landed squarely on a mud-encrusted sash pin.

"Gimme that," said Billy, jerking it from my hand.

"I'll bet it's Laurie's."

"You'd lose that bet, sucker," said Billy, rubbing it between his filthy fingers at the river's edge.

Suddenly, he smiled, giving me a sideways glance.

Before I knew what was happening, Billy launched the pin down the river. It skipped like a smooth stone.

"What are you doing? Are you crazy? We should have given that to the police!" I protested.

"No. We shouldn't. The police are stumbling over their own two feet. They can't solve what they had for breakfast, much less a murder."

Billy turned to look me squarely in the eye.

"That wasn't Jenny's," he said. "That belonged to some whore who lost it having nookie by the river."

"How do you know?"

"Don't you think I'd recognize my own sister's pin?"

I was silent. Turning away, I headed for home. This time, Billy did not try to stop me.

To this day, I've never told a living soul about that day at the river. And from that day to this, I have never, ever seen Billy's sister wear any jewelry of any kind.

She's just too poor.