September and October Friday evenings in the Eden country meant high school football. Home games of the Indian River High School Warriors were social events, and one reason was that anyone who wanted to could get in on the fun.
Any boy with all his body parts functioning more or less as they should could play on the team—the coach never cut anybody. Even better, the coach regularly made wholesale substitutions in the last quarter of the game, so every player got in the game for at least one series of downs. This policy didn’t help the Warriors’ won-lost record—which perennially hovered around .500—but it endeared him to the students and the parents in the athletic booster club, whose support translated into job security, always a consideration with football coaches.
Any student who could hold an instrument could play in the band. With spiffy uniforms provided by the band boosters and instruments from the school board, the hundred-strong band played a short pregame show and an extensive halftime extravaganza for every home game, rain or shine. As the students marched up and down the field in orchestrated drills that formed letters and locomotives and war bonnets, three students in wheelchairs sat near the director’s podium on the midfield sideline and tooted lustily.
Ten majorettes in skimpy costumes strutted in front of the parade twirling batons and flashing legs clad in flesh-covered stockings as their friends in the stands threatened to drown out the music with cheering and applause.
During the game, the cheerleaders on the sidelines performed simple synchronized gymnastics and made as much noise as a dozen girls can, which is not a lot. Still, with hair streaming and legs kicking, they were fun to watch as they exaggerated the emotional ebb and flow of the game and tried to coax big noises from the crowd to sustain the mighty Warriors doing battle on the gridiron.
Despite the debate among the chattering classes in the big cities over the politically correct usage of American Indian names for sports teams, this high school team was still the Warriors. Was and, barring atomic war, always would be. Anyone suggesting changing the nickname would have been laughed at. Every year a new crop of students made posters that exhorted the faithful, BE TRUE TO YOUR SCHOOL—SUPPORT THE WARRIORS, and hung them in the hallways of the school building. It was high-schoolish, of course, yet the innocent fervor of youth kept it fresh and new.
For all these reasons, when the Warriors were playing at home on autumn Friday nights, the stadium at Indian River High was the place to be. With the exception of a few curmudgeons and elderly crocks who had forgotten what it meant to be young, the sick and shut in, and those behind county bars or in county bars, everyone was there.
Even Hayden and Matilda Elkins.
Not that they had a choice. Their son, Billy Joe, was the starting quarterback. Still, with their conjugal troubles the talk of the county, Matilda was sorely tempted to avoid the humiliation that thoughtless tongues would inflict and leave Billy Joe uncheered this night.
“Look what you’ve done to us,” Matilda said to her husband.
“I’d like to stay home, dear, and I know you would, too, but we must go,” Hayden replied. “I’m thinking of Billy Joe. He’ll want us there.”
Actually he was thinking of Ed Harris, who would undoubtedly go to the game to see if Hayden had the guts to show his face. Well, Ed gave his wife away and made everyone laugh, but Hayden intended to laugh last. He was going to make Ed beg to get his wife back, beg on his knees. He would show the bastard.
Talking to Hayden was like talking to a stone, Matilda thought. She tried to explain. “This is Billy Joe’s last year of high school. The very last, of our only son. We’ll ruin it for him if we sit in the stands like two felons while everyone whispers and giggles and points.”
“We’re going. I’ll go upstairs and get Anne.”
Several seconds passed before Matilda recovered sufficiently to say, “You must be crazy!”
“No. She’ll want to go, too.” He darted up the stairs.
Matilda sat in a chair and put her head between her knees. He was going with Anne Harris whether she went or not. She could feel the walls closing in, threatening to crush her.
She heard Anne’s voice in the upstairs hallway, heard her coming down the stairs with Hayden. “How chilly will it be tonight? Will I need a jacket?”
Matilda’s last ray of hope faded. The darkness was total. She felt herself sliding slowly into the abyss.
“Come, dear.” Hayden was at her elbow, lifting her from the chair. “You’ll need a jacket, too. It’ll get down into the fifties by the last quarter.”
Matilda didn’t know how she managed, but she got to her feet and navigated across the living room toward the door with her husband at her elbow. He snagged her jacket from the closet on the way by.
Out in the driveway Hayden got a shock. His sedan was gone. Billy Joe’s Jeep was sitting in its place.
The boy hadn’t asked permission to borrow the car, which irritated the father. The kid was taking liberties. He made a mental note to add this transgression to the list.
“We’ll take the Jeep,” Hayden said calmly to his ladies.
“You must be joking,” Anne Harris declared. “It has no roof. My hair will be a mess. We can take my car.”
Matilda almost revolted right there. It was bad enough going with Anne, but in her car? When she opened her mouth to protest, no sounds came out. Hayden steered her toward the car with a firm grip on her arm and stuffed her into the right front seat.
Nothing was said on the journey toward Indian River. Nothing. We’re three condemned prisoners going to our own execution, Matilda thought. Driven into the outer darkness by our wanton lust and sin, unrepentant and unable to save ourselves, we stagger blindly toward the gallows.
“What a lovely fall evening,” Anne remarked cheerfully.
As they neared the stadium several people recognized them and waved. Matilda dug her nails into the palms of her hands.
After Hayden parked the car, they walked toward the main gate. A shrieking noise grew in Matilda’s ears. The cries of souls in torment grew louder and louder with every step.
Anne Harris was paying no attention to the noise or gawking people. She walked along preoccupied with savage thoughts that had nothing to do with football. She had agreed to come tonight because the unexpected invitation gave her a golden opportunity to set tongues and eyebrows wagging furiously. Ed’s object, of course, in ordering this living arrangement at the point of a gun had been to embarrass her, humble her, shame her. He was not going to succeed, she told herself again for the twentieth time. She was not going to knuckle under.
That shotgun blast had been a declaration of war.
Up to that moment, I could have forgiven him. He could have forgiven me. But when he pulled that trigger the die was cast. He chose war, war against his wife, the woman who loved him. So war it shall be, war hard and terrible, war unto the last drop of blood, war until the very stones shriek for mercy.
I’m tough enough, she told herself. And I can fight—I can thrust, parry, cut, slash, stab and kill. I’m smart enough and tough enough to weather whatever comes, to endure, to triumph! When the blood stops flowing and the bodies are counted, I shall be the victor.
The evening was damp. Minutes before the sun set, thin, gauzy tendrils of fog wafted across the ground in the open end of the football stadium nearer the river. Still, the band marched up and down the field blaring loudly as the players of the two teams milled on their respective sidelines. They whacked one another on the shoulder pads and smacked one another on the butt.
On the Indian River sideline Billy Joe Elkins took time from his male bonding duties to watch Melanie Naroditsky strut her stuff. She was a majorette, second one in on the left side.
Melanie could really strut, Billy Joe thought. Her knees came up waist high with every step; her head was back; those two magnificent breasts thrust forward and cut the air like the twin prows of a catamaran as her baton flashed up and down in perfect rhythm with the other girls’. And she was smiling. As she passed the bench Billy Joe caught her eye and gave her a little wave. She waved back with her free hand and her grin widened, displaying dazzling teeth that had cost her dad five grand in orthodontic bills.
Despite the gridiron warfare looming in his immediate future, Billy Joe felt a flutter in his loins.
While Melanie and her fellow majorettes led the band from the field, Billy Joe’s eye wandered over the gathering crowd. He saw his parents making their way through the crowd with Anne Harris trailing behind, climb into the grandstand, clamber past the earlier arrivals and settle onto their roost, his dad in the middle between the two women.
Boy! You gotta hand it to the Old Man, Billy Joe mused. Bringing your wife and mistress to a football game—that takes balls!
Not once in the past seventeen years had Billy Joe gotten an inkling that his father had a performance like this in him. Dad had been staid, conservative, almost colorless, the prosecuting attorney for six or eight years, a serious man people treated with deference and respect. Just goes to show, Billy Joe told himself. You never can tell.
For several seconds Billy Joe wondered how his mother was taking all this. She was a quiet woman who usually had little to say. Looking at her in the grandstand, Billy Joe realized that he didn’t know her very well.
Billy Joe was handling The Situation just fine. Of course, he had taken some kidding and would probably get some more, but it had been gentle, not intended to hurt. After all, it wasn’t as if he had walked into algebra class with his fly unzipped, which would be a major mortification. Kids are a pretty tolerant bunch, most of them. Too many have to deal with difficult situations at home. While they mercilessly apply peer pressure over trivialities like clothes and haircuts and earrings, they are quite protective when one of their own has parent problems.
Billy Joe waved at people he knew. There was Junior Grimes, along with his buddy Arch Stehlik, Moses and Lula Grimes, ol’ Verlin Ice…friends, acquaintances, all making their way in or cheering the band, pointing to friends, talking, laughing…
Billy Joe was still waving when the coach came up behind him and spoke. “Time to get your mind on business, Billy Joe. Those guys are big and tough. Remember the game plan.”
“Sure, Coach.”
Up in the stands Hayden was searching for his former friend, Ed Harris, while trying to look like he was merely watching the local team prepare to take the field. This activity involved keeping his head pointed toward the field while doing some serious scanning out of the corners of his eyes. Alas, he didn’t see the man.
Don’t tell me that cockroach didn’t come!
Finally he whispered to Anne, “Do you see Ed?”
“I haven’t been looking” was the ingenuous reply. “I couldn’t care less.”
Her answer peeved Hayden more than a little. Most women, in his experience, were extraordinarily curious about all aspects of the relationship between the genders. That curiosity was essential to their femininity. And Anne Harris didn’t have it! The possibility that she was lying to him never crossed his mind. A wave of self-pity washed over Hayden, clouding his eyes with tears. He had picked an android from Planet X for his first—and last—extramarital fling. It just wasn’t fair.
As quickly as the self-pity swept over him, it passed, leaving a bilious residue. His eyes swiveled to Anne. She sat smiling blandly, the third member of this happy ménage à trois, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
“I care,” Hayden snarled at his second wife. “Start looking.”
“No,” she replied sweetly and waved to Billy Joe, who waved back. She leaned around Ed and said to Matilda, “There’s our son. He sees us.”
How she kept from exploding or dying of stroke right then and there, Matilda Elkins never knew. With iron self-control, she stood and turned to push past knees to the aisle.
“Where are you going?” Hayden hissed.
Her self-discipline deserted her. Matilda spoke in a loud voice that could be heard for twenty feet. “I’m going to pee, darling. If you will excuse me.”
And she went. Past a half dozen sets of knees, down the aisle to the walkway, left turn and march toward the gate, then through and out of the glare of the lights into the foggy darkness.
As the damp night enveloped her, tears began flowing.
At least she could still cry!
The new minister of the Eden Chapel, Mrs. Carcano, saw her in the glare of her headlights, a woman staggering along, racked by sobs. She halted the car and told her daughter, “You can walk from here. The stadium is up ahead—you see the lights. I’ll pick you up here in two hours, after the game.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Mrs. Carcano eased the distraught woman into the front seat of her car, then turned the vehicle around. She drove back toward Eden as Matilda Elkins cried and cried.
When Hayden and Anne arrived home after the game, the house was empty. No Matilda.
Hayden was beside himself. All during the game he had wondered where she disappeared to. Home, he told himself. Then he stewed because she went off and left him sitting alone with Anne Harris in the middle of thirty-five hundred people, every damned one of whom was pointing and whispering. He was a quivering mass of cold fury when he unlocked the front door and charged into the house. And she wasn’t here. It didn’t compute.
Where could she be?
A slimy worm of suspicion began to gnaw on his mind. She wouldn’t. No. Not Matilda. She wouldn’t pull a dirty trick like that, would she?
He seized the telephone and dialed. One ring, two—
“Hello.”
“Harris, you bastard, is my wife at your house?”
Silence. Then, “This is not the stray wives’ shelter. If you’ve lost one, you might call Hayden Elkins and ask if he has her.”
Hayden slammed down the phone. He was so furious he shook.
He mixed himself a drink, hoping the alcohol would calm his nerves. He got halfway through a Bloody Mary before he again wondered what had happened to Matilda.
Like many young men, Billy Joe Elkins carried a condom in his wallet. He had purchased it for seventy-five cents eighteen months ago from a vending machine in a service station restroom, one decorated with a cartoon-quality color picture of an extraordinarily endowed, naked young woman in the throes of sexual ecstasy.
The artwork didn’t sell the condom. Nor was the price important—he would have willingly paid ten times that amount. That was merely the first opportunity he had to make the purchase. Teenage boys can’t select a package of Trojans or French ticklers in the local supermarket and toss them on the conveyor belt at the checkout counter for the female clerk to ring up. Nor are there many drowsy drugstores still extant with a worldly-wise male druggist manning the counter and no female customers in sight. Not in America these days.
Of course, some of his friends just shoplifted their condoms, but Billy Joe’s father was the prosecuting attorney, which made the faint possibility of being arrested for shoplifting a condom too hideous a fate to contemplate.
It was only after he had the condom that Billy Joe realized that he could have merely approached Junior Grimes, who would have filched one out of Doolin’s for him and slipped the money in the register. Some of his friends obtained their condoms this way. When he needed another—he fervently prayed that day wasn’t far off—he intended to get it with Junior’s help.
Ownership of a condom created its own set of problems. Where to keep it? After much deliberation he did as so many others had before him—he stowed the weapon in his wallet, which transformed the wallet into a glowing, radioactive time bomb that would blow up in his face if he was the least bit careless. One of his friends, Jimmy Druckett, had had the thing fall out of his wallet at a movie theater concession stand when he was fishing in there for a dollar. That was a freak accident, tragic but probably unavoidable. The greatest danger was a snooping mother. Joe Bean’s mom found his when he left his wallet lying on his dresser while he showered. Mothers snoop: Any boy who didn’t understand that verity and take proper precautions was about to have a very bad experience.
Mothers never understand the significance of the condom to their teenage sons. A boy didn’t get a condom because he had a willing female lined up and ready. Oh, no. He got it because he was interested—obsessed—with sex and was trying to convince himself that if an opportunity ever presented itself, he could handle it.
Girls were obsessed with attractiveness. Could they get the right male interested? They studied magazine articles on makeup and hairstyles and fashion, listened to pop music about “love” and preened endlessly, instinctively seeking to acquire the tools necessary to attract that male. They constantly reassured one another—“you look so good, your hair is perfect for you, what a stunning outfit, I love your lipstick”—because they needed constant reassurance.
Boys, on the other hand, were concerned with performance. Fear of failure was the nightmare that haunted young men. The condom in the wallet was their tangible, perpetual assurance that when the moment came, they would succeed.
Tonight Billy Joe Elkins and Melanie Naroditsky were going to slay their dragons.
Melanie was waiting when Billy Joe came out of the locker room after the game. In Hayden’s car she held his hand, fluffed his hair, batted her eyelashes and rubbed his leg as they drove along regaling each other with the adventures of the evening. She was still in her majorette outfit, a tight sweater and a tiny pleated skirt that showed off her figure and legs. Her cheeks glowed, her eyes flashed, two-hundred-proof life coursed through her veins.
Billy Joe got the message. Yes.
He drove through Canaan and turned off into the driveway of an abandoned farm he knew about. The headlights seemed out of place on the one-lane dirt track running through the forest, but the happy lovers were oblivious to the incongruity. Billy Joe parked in the weed-choked yard of the crumbling old house and turned off the engine and headlights. Melanie flowed into his arms.
Yes, yes, yes.
The petting got heavy quickly. Soon they were both moaning softly. After only a minute more, they were undressed and ready as only two healthy teenagers can be. That was when Billy Joe retrieved his wallet from the pocket of his trousers, which were now on the backseat of the car, and extracted the precious condom.
As Melanie panted, Billy Joe tried to open the foil packet. Strange as it may seem, gentle reader, he had never before been tempted to open the packet and examine the device that would vault him into manhood. After all, a rubber is a rubber. “Just peel that tire down over your tool and have at it,” his friends had told him in one of those long-ago male info sessions.
Now, in the darkness, with Melanie ready and willing and hot enough to melt, he couldn’t get the foil packet open. He tried to tear it with his fingernails and that didn’t work. What if his frantic efforts damaged the condom? Desperate, he threw caution to the winds and used his teeth. The foil tore.
Now he had the thing in his hands. He felt it hurriedly to ensure it wasn’t damaged, then placed it where it was supposed to go and tried to peel. His efforts got it rolled down about an inch. It would go no farther.
Damn!
“Oh, Billy,” Melanie moaned. “I can’t wait much longer.”
“I’m trying, darling,” he told her, his frustration growing exponentially.
He just couldn’t get the damned thing on. “I think I got it on upside down or inside out or some damn thing,” he confessed to his lady love.
The car was dark as a tomb. Melanie was a practical girl. She used her fingers to examine the situation.
He was panting and Melanie was buck naked and bent over his male organ working on the condom when a brilliant light flashed.
The flash stunned and blinded Billy Joe, but he instinctively knew what it was. A camera!
“You two just hold that pose and let me get another.” A male voice, from outside the car.
Melanie screamed.
The camera flashed again.
“You son of a bitch,” Billy Joe roared. He disentangled himself from Melanie and jerked at the door handle. The dome light in the car came on as the door opened, then an irresistible force slammed the door shut against him.
“Whoa, there, stud. You stay inside while I look this situation over.”
Billy Joe went limp. In the two seconds the dome light had been on, he had gotten a glimpse of uniform and badge. The law!
A flashlight came on. Melanie was sobbing and trying to cover herself. Tears welled up in Billy Joe’s eyes as the beam played over his face, the top of her head, her bare arms and legs.
“Well, well, well, if this don’t beat all. Billy Joe Elkins and the Naroditsky girl. Ol’ Frank Naroditsky is going to have a cow when he hears about this.”
Billy Joe recognized the voice.
Delmar Clay.
“Clay, you son of a—if you—”
“Don’t start with the bad mouth, punk. You’re the one who’s bare-ass naked. Now I suggest you two get yourselves dressed, then drive on out of here.”
“Those pictures—why’d you take those pictures?”
“I said get dressed, then get out of here. Unless you want to go to the sheriff’s office and watch me call your parents. Maybe your dad will bring all his wives with him, Billy Joe, when he comes to take you home.”
Clay laughed at his own wit and kept the flashlight beam on them as they dressed.
“I gotta admit, Billy Joe, that there is one prime piece of ass. She looks like she can really fuck. You’ll get some of that one of these days, I’ll bet. But not here. Not tonight.”
Melanie was near hysteria. Billy Joe bit his lip, but still the tears leaked down his cheeks. He kept his face down so that Delmar Clay wouldn’t see him cry.
When he had his pants and shirt on, he turned the key, gunned the engine, and pulled the automatic transmission into drive. The glow of the deputy’s flashlight was lost behind them in the darkness as the car threaded its way into the trees.
When they reached the safety of the Canaan road, Melanie put her head in his lap. “There, there, darling,” he murmured, stroking her hair and trying to comfort the distraught girl.
His embarrassment leaked from him quickly, leaving in its place a sublime tenderness toward Melanie and a profound sorrow that anyone would ever hurt her. The bitter rage he felt toward Delmar Clay, however, grew with every sob that racked Melanie’s body.
Although he didn’t realize it then, and probably never would, Billy Joe Elkins had just taken a giant step into manhood.