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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    The mountains bore mantles of scarlet and auburn. Leaves, frost-burnished, winked and turned in the mild air of Indian summer. Sun flooded the sere marshes in the valley bottom full of cattails and frogs, carp and mosquito infested sloughs. Sun shimmered on metal colored canals, glinting on Meadowlark wings, cruised over the summer-battered face of Lake Moroni.

    Can you hear the motor of my car chugging asthmatically up Main Street? It is a vintage car with torn upholstery, sun bleached tatters of fiction upon which we sat like Lords. Biff Doyle was riding in the honored shotgun seat beside me, grinning foolishly, his newly straightened teeth capped with gold. Biff Doyle, with his with his football knee and broken training. In the back seat, sitting upon exposed metal springs, Willy and Max were grab-assing over a cigarette butt we had picked up off the street in front of the barbershop. Clayton Bostwick was still in exile.

    Listen to the geese as they pulse in slings across the blue sky of early evening toward their feeding grounds in the foothills. The goose season opened the next day, a great event. The bottomlands and the tawny stubble fields would swarm with hunters at first light. But that was tomorrow, and tonight the harvest ball where we hoped to arrive, preening and swaggering, drunk with dark summer wine and a conspiracy to go through women like a hay mower.

    It was the first time we really had our freedom that summer. When school started I was cut back to part-time work at Pete’s service station. I had adamantly refused to resume going to church. I was stopped on the street, I was hounded on the telephone by the Bishopric, but I refused. “Every body’s gotta meet God on their own terms, despite some of the things you might hear, Andy,” Pete said one afternoon as we were changing a truck tire. “And one Gods as good as another God if you just remember that you don’t run the show, God does.” Pete saved me. The mystery of the two deaths in the Hotel Bruxelles hung over me like a shroud of whispers. “You saved your ma and grandma’s life, boy, you’re a hero.”

    I had acquired the car through the good offices of Pete. I was the envy of the high school. Only four or five other seniors– there were 30 in my graduating class– had cars. The 1940 Ford got me my first steady girlfriend, Cheryl Valentine, who I really didn’t know what to do with. She was round and soft and smelled like new hay. She wore my class ring around her neck on a gold chain. She made me into a rubber-faced idiot. It was my hope that tonight I would overwhelm her with my maturity, and would, at last, get a step or two past first base with her.

    With the freedom of the car that summer the gang had been able to get together for swimming parties and went to almost every Saturday night dance at the pavilion at Lakota Resort on Lake Moroni. With the coming of the vibrant fall, hunting became the focus of the gang. Tomorrow was the beginning of the fall hunting. Hunting was life, hunting was tradition, and hunting was necessary to fill many larders. The shedding of blood was not symbolic, but pragmatic. We were very good hunters.

    It was a glorious, late October Saturday afternoon. I drove to the top of Academy Hill where we horse played in the rubble of the old academy that had burned, taking with it another historical hinge. We had our heads together for some last minute planning. We fished around importantly for courage, puffing noxious cigarettes in a dread of hope, with the fear of being caught, and the sweet smell of sin filling nostrils. We were sails full set into that sunset.

    There was an old benighted outcast in the town–Jesse Sizemore. He was a sawyer, mostly unemployed. He wore lumberjack outfits, a scabrous Max Bunyan who bootlegged rather than accept unemployment checks. He was notorious for a special kind of rotgut, the object that night of all our intentions. Jesse was habitually in residence at the Idaho Billiards that was cheek by jowl by a connecting door to the Red Rooster Cafe.

    The Idaho Billiards was much like the Oracle at Delphi, one that excluded minors. Connections were made with the Jesse by elaborate propitiation. We had been furtively slipping dollar bills into Jesse’s dirty hands for a month, which he indicated he had to pass into the hands of other, more obscure Priests to get the deal pulled off. When Jesse figured he had milked us for all we were worth, he set the date. Tonight was the night. Tonight wine and women, tomorrow the hunt. Life was good.

    It was traditional to become sneakily stupefied with drink before the deer and goose hunts in the valley for all except the strictest of the faithful. Even Bishop Rich, when he was younger, had backslid once, and had drunk a bottle of warm beer, or so rumor had it. It was also said that he had smoked a cheroot. We never knew the source of the rumor; it had been passed down for at least a generation.

    All men did it.

    Hearts tucked up into our throats, we dragged Main Street, the old car throwing blue smoke. I flipped a U-turn at the northern city limits and idled south. We tried not to stare into the murky windows of the Red Rooster Cafe or the adjacent Idaho Billiards. But it was like trying to pass the window of a candy store pretending not to see what delights were on the shelves. Cigar smoke was minutely diced through the screen mesh of the door, the rarest of perfumes; Sin hot as Hell’s own headlights.

    I parked the Ford a block away from the pool hall, and the gang got out and drifted nonchalantly down the street, as obvious as pine trees in a desert. As we drew nearer the door in the dusky light, we heard the crack of the pool balls, the riffle and smack of cards as they were shuffled. We peered through the glass without breaking stride, faces tense with a wonder and guilty apprehension. Willy stumbled into the gutter, turning his ankle inside a cowboy boot. He swore mightily. We about-faced for another trolling inspection of the dark interior.

    Jesse was sitting at a card table, wearing a faded fisherman’s cap with a green plastic visor, the kind of beaked Sword fishermen hat Hemingway wore. I had seen that picture in Life magazine. We loitered conspicuously around the brand new parking meters, debating furiously upon whom would breach the Charybdis of the “No Minors” door. On Academy Hill we had flipped a coin, odd man in the breach, and it fell to me to the relief of the other three. And, as I did not have a father to answer to, it was only just.

    My legs wobbled with fear as I marched through the screen door of the Idaho Billiards for the first time in my life. Rather, I was self-consciously prancing, trying to get my sea legs. God, no one seemed to even notice me! I took courage. I was weak in the knees, but full of bravado because Willy and Biff and Max were watching through the large plate of smoke yellowed glass. I approached the big wood bar and looked Bill Sweeney square in the face.

    “Gimmee a couple of Crooks.”

    “Coupla what, son?” Bill Sweeny knew me as well as his own son.

    “Uh, those Cigars.”

    “You mean those sweet ‘Ceegars?’”

    “Yeh.”

    “Ya like those sissy smokes, huh boy?”

    “No, I, uh, gimmee a can of that Copenhagen Snuff.”

    “Snoose too?”

    “What?”

    “Chew too, do ya?”

    “Course I chew. Hell, I wouldn’t buy it if I didn’t.”

    “Got any I.D.?”

    “Damn rights I got I.D.”

    “Well, let’s see it fer ‘Chrissake.’ ”

    Everyone was watching now, the pool balls had slithered across the cushions and stopped, not a card was played in the Idaho Billiards in those moments, and I was terrified.

    “Sure, uh. . . I must have left it . . . wallet’s in the car, I guess.”

    “Don’t give me that crap, Lattimore. Here, take ‘em and git out. And don’t try comin’ in here again ‘till yer eighteen or I’ll have the Sheriff on you like ugly on a mongrel dog. Now git!”

    He shoved the packet of sweet cigars toward me, and tossed the can of dip next to them, glancing toward the street for the Sheriff. I took them and turned away.

    “Hold it!”

    My hands shot up instinctively, holding the goods.

    “It ain’t free, ya know.”

    I counted out a dollar and fourteen cents, blushing like the “Dago Red” that was served across the bar. Sweeney turned away, hiding his grin, and rang up the sale.

    I could smell frying onions from the Red Rooster cafe next door.

    I made a wide arc toward the door that brought me close to the table where Jesse sat, engrossed in his cards. I stood there for a moment, and then Jesse looked up at me. His whiskered face had the blankness of evil written in every deep, grimy line in his face. I mimed a huge, leering wink. It was a signal we’d learned when we were juniors, for word was that was the high sign when doing business with the breakers of the Word of Wisdom. But Jesse just lowered his rheumy eyes. I stood, hesitantly, waiting for Jesse to return the sign. Then he snarled, “Git, boy!”

    I scuttled out of the large smoky room like a bat.

    “What’d he say Andy? God, that was neat,” Max said loudly. I lead them toward the Ford, and we piled into the front and back seats, four doors slamming, and huddled expectantly in the early dark.

    “And you got Ceegars too!” Willy said admiringly.

    “Yeh,” I shrugged,

    “Ceegars.” Willy looked at me worshipfully, and I felt the full reward of sin. He unwrapped the cigar, and said, “Damn, I wished I looked as old as you do.” He lit the cigar with a blue tip kitchen match, but I was disdainful, and quiet.

    “Hell, I coulda done it too,” Biff said, his handsome, athletic face trying to projecting injured superiority. If his father knew half the times Biff fractured the Word of Wisdom he’d be buried in the barley field back of the house. I basked in their adulation. Biff got his sin-supplies from his older brother, but he let us think it was from the pool hall in Appelton where “I’m never asked for my I.D,” he scornfully lied. He’d never set foot in the place.

    We waited.

    “Did he get the sign?” Max kept asking, puffing on the sweet cheap cigar until his eyes were crossed.

    “There he is,” Willy said, coughing. Jesse Sizemore had actually strolled out on the darkening street that was glowing blue under the new streetlights. Alma had pretensions. The new vapor streetlights gave off a spectrum of light that was an attractant for a kind of beetle I’d never seen before. They were the size of a playing card, and when they flew they flew on wings sounding like cards being shuffled. Where were the Mormon seagulls when we needed them? And, in further evidence of the town’s sophistication, ten parking meters had been installed in front of the bank and pharmacy. No one ever parked in front of them in my memory. I surveyed the empty street.

    “Go get it Andy,” Willy said. “Don’t give him no more’n five dollars. That's all we’re supposed to give ‘em. We already give ‘em half the money to pay for the gallon. Shit, he makes it out of flowers anyways that don't cost nuthin’.”

    “Git movin’ Andy,” Biff said. “Jesse looks like he’s gonna go back inside.” I stepped from the car, and took three paces before I realized I still had the cigar in my mouth. In a panic I saw Mr. Valentine, Cheryl’s father, and one of the men who had murmured words that he read from a soiled index card over my father’s grave. I grabbed the cigar from my mouth, burning my fingers as I tried to pinch out the live coal. I threw the burning evidence into the gutter where it continued to smolder like a wet, burning haystack. I may as well have sent a telegram. LaVerl Valentine drew abreast of me, smiling with undisguised, righteous malice. He looked more evil than Jesse did. I was rooted to the sidewalk.

    “Evening Andrew, how’s your mother?” Valentine’s eyes dropped to the gutter.

    “Uh, good evening sir. She’s just fine.” My eyes slowly tracked Mr. Valentine’s eyes. I was a dead man, I thought.

    “Mighty funny smell this fine fall evening, wouldn’t you say?”

    “Where?” I asked innocently.

    “Why, I believe that’s a cigar in the gutter,” he exclaimed.

    “Must be burnin’ stubble you smell, Mr. Valentine,” I ventured.

    “No, right behind you. Yes, that’s a cigar all right,” his mouth pursed expectantly.

    “Yes sir, that sure looks like a cigar.”

    “And it’s still burning.”

    “Yeh, I guess it is, at that.”

    “Well, I wonder where it came from?”

    “There’s a stranger who came by here a few minutes ago from the pool hall. He must’uv thrown it there. Me’n Willy an’ Max are just sittin’ here waiting for the movie to open, and then after the first feature we’re going to the Harvest Ball, Mr. Valentine.”

    “Stranger, huh?”

    “Yes sir. Looked like another one of those salesmen. Was wearing one of those colored ties. A big one. He went into the drugstore.”

    “You don’t say?” Valentine’s eyes were beginning to gather wrath from the indexes of my experience.

    “It’s a filthy habit, isn’t it?” I blurted.

    “That’s right. I see your mother has given you proper instruction. We must not contaminate the temple of our bodies.”

    “No sir.”

    “Yes, very well. You must know, that if I give you permission to call upon my daughter again, you will have to go before the Bishop and confess to your breaking of the Word of Wisdom. That is the least I can do for you, now that you think you can no longer attend church. You have a lot of growing up to do, Andrew. My daughter’s lips will never be sullied by lips such as yours. Give your mother my regards,” he said.

    Mr. Valentine wore a prim face as he turned the canvas back of his hunting jacket to me and, eyes in the back of his head, sauntered on down Main Street past the Red Rooster, the Idaho Billiards, the Drugstore, J.C. Penny, and the Hotel Bruxelles. Valentine’s head was erect, he continued to sniff the air, policing the parking meters down, and out of sight. Cheryl would never speak to me again.

    Willy and Max were speechless behind the glass of the windshield of the Ford. I smiled at them triumphantly, picked up the cigar, puffed it back to life, and walked to the corner for the rendezvous.

    It was fully dark when Jesse spotted me. Jesse saw my white shirt and narrow black tie. The whites of his eyes were yellow ivory in the blue light. Jesse ambled down the street and then disappeared, so I began to follow him across a weed choked vacant lot. He was heading toward the appointed place!

    I approached the old coal shed cautiously, and saw the glow of a cigarette through the tipped down green-visored cap.

    “That you Jesse?”

    “No, boy, it’s the Devil.”

    “What?”

    “Oh, shaddup. Whad’ ya want boy?” I could see Jesse’s eyes when he pulled close on the cigarette. It was the Devil!

    “Thought you knew Jesse. We want a gallon.”

    “Ain’t got it.”

    “But you knew about this . . .”

    “Don’t know nuthin’ boy, ‘cept the sun might rise if ‘n I don’t bet on it.”

    “Hey, wait a minute!” I took a step back, but felt no fear, only a coldness from within. Screw this old drunk.

    “Shit, boy, shaddup. ‘Ya wanna bring the cops down on us?”

    “Well, where the hell is it?” I demanded. “You were supposed to . . .”

    “Got it hid. Didn’t expect me to come packin’ it down main street did ‘ya?”

    “Guess not. Where is it?” I was frightened. Courage destroyed by the knowledge of my bluff.

    “You got money?”

    “Yeh, I got the five bucks.”

    “It’s ten.”

    “Wait a minute . . .”

    “Or you don’t get it.”

    “Fuck you.” (The Word, the cold and deep word, the first time I’d ever uttered it to an adult. Jesse serenely continued, as if he had not heard me.)

    “Risks’ too high, boy. I stand a hunnert’ dollar fine I git caught sellin’ my stuff. It’s good stuff, boy. Five hunnert’ for sellin’ to minors. How old’re you anyhow, boy?”

    “Old enough.”

    “Ever think what happens to me if I git caught? Ever think?”

    “I think you’re trying to screw me.”

    “Hah!” Jesse guffawed. “You ain’t never seen a pussy, let alone gittin’ some.” I moved backward, edging toward the starlit door. “What’s yer name anyhow? Bet yer Mama don’t know you’re tryin’ to buy hootch offa ole Jesse, now does she boy?”

    “She knows.”

    “She don’t know shit. Say, ain’t you the son of the new Widder? Ain’t you that Lattimore kid?”

    “No! Billy, the name’s Billy. You got it or not?” I shrank as Jesse studied my face. His eyes were dark as the coal. He extended a hand, and put it on my shoulder like a pincer. His breath stank like the clinkers from a dead furnace. “Come on, I ain’t gonna hurt you. The wine’s hidden down in the Bottoms. On the White Rock Road. You didn’t expect me to bring it here did ya? Five Hunnert’ dollar fine. On the White Rock Road, just before the bridge. Third fencepost on the right. Now, Gimmee!”

    “How do I know you aren’t lying? How do I know you won’t just take my money and the wine won’t be there?”

    “Cause its summer wine, boy. And now it’s fall. Your fall! You gotta trust me don’t ya? Gimmee!” He took me by the narrow black tie. A green visor touched my hairline.

    “I... I don’t know. If it isn’t there we’ll get you Jesse, you bastard! We’ll turn you in!”

    “I know you will you little twig.” He shoved me violently against the wall, the old pine boards cracked. “You know damn well that’s exactly why I said it’s where I said it is. You ever tell where you got it, and I’ll git you. Dead.”

    Jesse took the five one-dollar bills from my clenched fist and bolted.

    “You gave him the money without getting the goods?” Biff asked in disbelief.

    “Yeh,” Willy echoed, looking at the smoking, clay feet of his idol.

    “Didn’t you get anything?” Max wailed. “I had to pinch that money out of my ole man’s wallet. What I got to show for it except the word of a drunk?”

    “Just shut up, will you?” I said savagely, as I drove toward White Rock Road. “It’ll be there, or I’ll kill the bastard.”

“The Brethren” is copyrighted © 2001 by T. O. McCallister. All rights reserved. You may not republish or reproduce this work without the expressed written permission of the author by any means mechanical, electronic, graphic, including photocopying, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems. Permission can be granted by writing the author at alimed42@yahoo.com. He also welcomes your feedback to this story. All violators will be persecuted