9
And it still wasn’t over.
Deke and Ellen walked to center stage, finding their way almost magically around the streaks, splatters, and clots of cream. No one would have dreamed of tossing a cream pie at either ofthem.
Deke raised his hands for silence, and when Ellen Dockerty stepped forward, she spoke in a clear classroom voice that carried easily over the murmurs and residual laughter.
“Ladies and gentleman, tonight’s performance ofJodie Jamboreewill be followed by three more.” This brought another wave of applause.
“These arebenefitperformances,” Ellie went on when the applause died down, “and it pleases me—yes, it pleases me very much—to tell you to whom the benefit will accrue. Last fall, we lost one of our valued students, and we all mourned the passing of Vincent Knowles, which came far, far,fartoo soon.”
Now there was dead silence from the audience.
“A girl you all know, one of the leading lights of our student body, was badly scarred in that accident. Mr. Amberson and Miss Dunhill have arranged for Roberta Jillian Allnut to have facial reconstructive surgery this June, in Dallas. There will be no cost to the Allnut family; I’m told by Mr. Sylvester, who has served as theJodie Jamboreeaccountant, that Bobbi Jill’s classmates—and this town—have assured that all the costs of the surgery will be paid in full.”
There was a moment of quiet as they processed this, then they leaped to their feet. The applause was like summer thunder. I saw Bobbi Jill herself on the bleachers. She was weeping with her hands over her face. Her parents had their arms around her.
This was one night in a small town, one of those burgs off the main road that nobody cares about much except for the people who live there. And that’s okay, becausetheycare. I looked at Bobbi Jill, sobbing into her hands. I looked at Sadie. There was cream in her hair. She smiled. So did I. She mouthedI love you, George.I mouthed backI love you, too.That night I loved all of them, and myself for being with them. I never felt so alive or happy tobealive. How could I leave all this, indeed?
The blow-up came two weeks later.
10
It was a Saturday, grocery day. Sadie and I had gotten into the habit of doing it together at Weingarten’s, on Highway 77. We’d push our carts companionably side by side while Mantovani played overhead, examining the fruit and looking for the best buys on meat. You could get almost any kind of cut you wanted, as long as it was beef or chicken. It was okay with me; even after nearly three years, I was still wowed by the rock-bottom prices.
That day I had something other than groceries on my mind: the Hazzard family living at 2706 Mercedes, a shotgun shack across the street and a little to the left of the rotting duplex that Lee Oswald would soon call home.Jodie Jamboreehad kept me very busy, but I’d managed three trips back to Mercedes Street that spring. I parked my Ford in a lot in downtown Fort Worth and took the Winscott Road bus, which stopped less than half a mile away. On these trips I dressed in jeans, scuffed boots, and a faded denim jacket I’d picked up at a yard sale. My story, if anyone asked for it: I was looking for a cheap rent because I’d just gotten a night watchman job at Texas Sheet Metal in West Fort Worth. That made me a trustworthy individual (as long as no one checked up), and supplied a reason why the house would be quiet, with the shades drawn, during the daylight hours.
On my strolls up Mercedes Street to the Monkey Wardwarehouse and back (always with a newspaper folded open to the rental section of the classifieds), I spotted Mr. Hazzard, a hulk in his mid-thirties, the two kids Rosette wouldn’t play with, and an old woman with a frozen face who dragged one foot as she walked. Hazzard’s mama eyed me suspiciously from the mailbox on one occasion, as I idled slowly past along the rut that served as a sidewalk, but she didn’t speak.
On my third recon, I saw a rusty old trailer hooked to the back of Hazzard’s pickup truck. He and the kids were loading it with boxes while the old lady stood nearby on the just-greening crabgrass, leaning on her cane and wearing a stroke-sneer that could have masked any emotion. I was betting on utter indifference. WhatIfelt was happiness. The Hazzards were moving on. As soon as they did, a working stiff named George Amberson was going to rent 2706. The important thing was to make sure I was first in line.
I was trying to figure out if there was any foolproof way to do that as we went about our Saturday shopping chores. On one level I was responding to Sadie, making the right comments, kidding her when she spent too much time at the dairy case, pushing the cart loaded with groceries out to the parking lot, putting the bags in the Ford’s trunk. But I was doing it all on autopilot, most of my mind worrying over the Fort Worth logistics, and that turned out to be my undoing. I wasn’t paying attention to what was coming out of my mouth, and when you’re living a double life, that’s dangerous.
As I drove back to Sadie’s place with her sitting quietly (too quietly) beside me, I was singing because the Ford’s radio was on the fritz. The valves had gotten wheezy, too. The Sunliner still looked snappy, and I was attached to it for all sorts of reasons, but it was seven years downstream from the assembly line and there were over ninety thousand miles on the clock.
I carried Sadie’s groceries into the kitchen in a single load, making heroic grunting noises and staggering for effect. I didn’t notice that she wasn’t smiling, and had no idea that our little period of greening was over. I was still thinking about Mercedes Street,and wondering what kind of a show I’d have to put on there—or rather, how much of a show. It would be delicate. I wanted to be a familiar face, because familiarity breeds disinterest as well as contempt, but I didn’t want to stand out. Then there were the Oswalds. She didn’t speak English and he was a cold fish by nature, all to the good, but 2706 was still awfully close. The past might be obdurate but the future was delicate, a house of cards, and I had to be very careful not to change it until I was ready. So I’d have to—
That was when Sadie spoke to me, and shortly after that, life as I had come to know it (and love it) in Jodie came crashing down.
11
“George? Can you come in the living room? I want to talk to you.”
“Hadn’t you better put your hamburger and pork chops in the fridge? And I think I saw ice cr—”
“Let it melt!”she shouted, and that brought me out of my head in a hurry.
I turned to her, but she was already in the living room. She picked up her cigarettes from the table beside the couch and lit one. At my gentle urgings she had been trying to cut down (at least around me), and this seemed somehow more ominous than her raised voice.
I went into the living room. “What is it, honey? What’s wrong?”
“Everything. What was that song?”
Her face was pale and set. She held the cigarette in front of her mouth like a shield. I began to realize that I had slipped up, but I didn’t know how or when, and that was scary. “I don’t know what you m—”
“The song you were singing in the car when we were coming home. The one you were bellowing at the top of your lungs.”
I tried to remember and couldn’t. All I could remember was thinking I’d always have to dress like a slightly down-on-his-luck workman on Mercedes Street, so I’d fit in. Sure I’d been singing,but I often did when I was thinking about other things—doesn’t everybody?
