Chapters from Recently Completed Novel December’s Children.
Chapter 1
THE PLAN
The rumor that year in Argus, Illinois, was that Margie Heinrich and her cheerleader girlfriends skinny-dipped out at Cottage Pond. No one had witnessed it, but Billy Ray Fleener, who was a year behind Margie at Curtis LeMay High School, wasn't taking any chances. When he wasn't waiting for abrupt boners to subside under his jeans, he routinely mounted his ten-speed and furiously pedaled the three miles out to the pond, which was shaded by a thick grove of Cottonwoods and Pawpaws favored by family gatherings and teenagers looking to French kiss and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
There was no cottage at Cottage Pond, and when asked, Argus citizens would scratch heads and shrug shoulders and reveal they really had no idea why it was called Cottage Pond. It didn't even have much in the way of amenities: a few splintered picnic tables with several decades of initials gouged in them, the occasional soiled condom, and a few rusty barbecue grills the forest preserve crews were supposed to clean, but never did. Dubious Cottage Pond history asserted that Abraham Lincoln once fished there, U.S. Grant once skinny-dipped there, and Ronald Reagan once peed there, which vexed the McLean County Republican Party to no end.
None of that mattered a lick to Billy Ray, who was 16 but already 5-foot-10 and beginning to fill out. He was considered a good-looking boy, though perhaps some folks felt his sideburns inched too far down his cheeks like fuzzy caterpillars in a hurry, which suggested the potential for impertinence, or even dissipation, though that was just idle speculation; the only impertinent thoughts on Billy Ray's mind concerned the peach fuzz he had once glimpsed on Margie's brown thighs where her cut-off jeans ended and the eternal anatomical mystery began.
It was July, 1966, and so far all Billy Ray had seen at the pond were some holy-roller types holding hands at a Baptist Church barbecue. Most of the time the pond was deserted except for a solitary fisherman wielding a cane pole. Sometimes Billy Ray remembered to pack his telescoping fishing rod in his backpack, and he would catch bluegills and catfish. One day he surprised a fox taking an early morning drink. He even spotted a pair of pink panties draped over a low-hanging branch; and once someone left a perfectly good Playboy on a picnic table. It was better than nothing, but not by much.
Billy Ray was a restless boy who sensed manhood was not so far off ,and he had a plan of sorts for easing into it: he fancied going out to California to become a professional surfer. He'd get a cool name, like Moondoggy (he knew that one was taken by somebody in the movies), or Sharkman (his current favorite was Tubular Boy), and he would wear baggies and surfer shirts, listen to the Beach Boys and wax his board a lot in the company of surfer girls in bikinis. He bought Surfer magazine at the Walgreen's in downtown Argus and already knew some of the surfer lingo. His favorite surfer expression was "cowabunga." He didn't know what it meant exactly, or whether it actually was a real word; he just knew surfers said it a lot, especially when they were riding an awesome wave.
As part of the plan, Billy Ray also though it would be a fine idea if somehow before he hit California he could lose his cherry to Margie Heinrich, who he was certain had lost hers already, perhaps even at Cottage Pond. Those panties he found could have been hers, though he had to admit to himself they seemed a little too large and matronly for someone like Margie.
The Plan had one fundamental flaw: Billy Ray had no money and no car, and he was still in high school in east central Illinois. The closest thing to surf were the waves of corn that shimmied and rattled when there was a breeze. California was more a state of mind, a concept or philosophy, than a reality to Billy Ray, who had nonetheless scrutinized it pretty good in the atlas at the school library; but the closest he'd ever been was when his family visited relatives in Quincy, Illinois, which was on the Mississippi River across from Missouri. He checked, but there definitely was no surfing on the Mississippi. No waves at all that he could see except the bow waves from immense grain barges. Otherwise, the mighty river was just flat and brown sludge-like water lurching south. He couldn't see why Mark Twain got such a boner over it.
On this particular day at Cottage Pond the picnic tables had been pushed together in a long row to accommodate the ladies of the Argus Flower Garden Society, which was a definite sign to Billy Ray that there would be no Margie Heinrich skinny-dipping with her friends. Several of the ladies recognized him and waved, chief among them Mrs. Dobbs, who lived across the street from Billy Ray and who tended a very colorful garden of marigolds and gardenias and a bunch of others Billy Ray couldn't name. He forced a smile and waved back at Mrs. Dobbs, and as he turned to pedal back to Argus, he heard a hideous commotion erupt, the main eruption coming from Minnie Sullivan, wife of Argus Mayor Hedges Sullivan.
The tables were abruptly emptied of ladies, who all fled to the nearest bank of Cottage Pond, where Mrs. Sullivan was pointing and hopping up and down and basically creeping Billy Ray, who -thought-she was having another of her spells, which usually signaled that she believed herself in the presence of The Lord. All the commotion turned out to be focused on Mrs. Sullivan's weiner dog -- Purdy Boy -- who somehow had gotten himself smack in the middle of Cottage Pond.
As Purdy Boy dogpaddled in a circle in the pond, Mrs. Sullivan shrieked even louder and all the ladies joined in and made it a choir. They were dressed to the nines, Billy Ray noted, in fine silk dresses and high heels and voluminous hats and white gloves, and he wondered for a moment why they'd put on those costumes to sit around picnic tables in the grass by a pond, but he had lately given up on understanding why adults insisted on doing everything in high ceremony.
It was Mrs. Dobbs who summoned Billy Ray first, but Minnie Sullivan was also quick to implore him to jump in and save Purdy Boy, who truth be told, Billy Ray thought, looked like a pretty good swimmer. But the little weiner dog showed signs of fatigue and panic. After he slipped beneath the surface once and popped up sputtering water, Billy Ray resigned himself to his fate and kicked off his Converse basketball shoes, slipped off his t-shirt and waded into Cottage Pond, where by then Purdy Boy had gone under again and Billy Ray got to him just in time.
But fetching Purdy Boy proved to be only the start of Billy Ray's tribulations because once he'd deposited the scrawny, saturated critter on the ground, Purdy Boy didn't move. He just remained in a Weiner dog fetal position. Minnie Sullivan began to pray for her Purdy Boy and all the other ladies conveyed looks of shock so grave as to nearly suggest the ones they had the day President Kennedy was shot in Dallas.
Billy Ray liked dogs and all animals as much as the next guy, but what really motivated him was the fear of riding back to Argus with a wet and smelly dead weiner dog on his lap and 15 shrieking ladies, so he went to work on Purdy Boy, first massaging his stomach and holding him up with his head down to maybe drain the water. Finally, in desperation, he opened the dog's mouth and tried blowing into it like his gym teacher had demonstrated mouth-to-mouth in first aid class. He had often fantasized about mouth-to-mouth with Margie, and even practiced inhaling and exhaling when no one was looking. Maybe that was what did it because Purdy Boy opened his eyes and vomited some water and something greenish. After a few minutes he was even wagging his weiner dog tail.
Minnie Sullivan insisted that Billy Ray put his bike in the back of Mrs. Dobbs' Rambler station wagon and ride back to Argus with the ladies. Someone produced a towel that had been used to cushion bowls of potato salad on the ride out, and he slipped on his t-shirt but had to ride back with wet jeans and surrounded by flower ladies who kept shooting him adoring glances.
In Argus they stopped at Mayor Sullivan's office, where Minnie regaled her husband with the tale of Purdy Boy's brush with death and proclaimed Billy Ray a hero, to which Mayor Sullivan seconded the motion. Someone asked Billy Ray what he'd like as a reward. Billy Ray remembered that he had a plan to get to California and surf. So he said he could use some kind of job for the summer. Mayor Sullivan said he'd get right to work on finding him one, but on the spot awarded him $50 from the Argus Good Deeds Program.
Minnie Sullivan had Billy Ray and his parents over to her house the next day for lemonade and fresh-baked cookies. Everyone said his rescue of Purdy Boy indicated Billy Ray was blessed with luck and had a bright life ahead of him. When someone asked him what he wished for in the future, he just smiled and everyone took it for modesty, a quality much-valued in Argus
.
But actually Billy Ray was silent because he was assessing whether his star had brightened enough so he could get into Margie Heinrich's pants.
Chapter 4
SURF’S UP
Saturday.
Downtown Argus under a warm orange sun.
Midwest farmers' daughters crowded Walgreen's perfume counter.
Mr. Teters swept the sidewalk in front of his barber shop in a white apron.
Mayor Sullivan picked his teeth after a steak sandwich at Bunnie's Tavern.
Pizza maker Moss Newbury skimped on pepperoni slices at Monical's.
Mrs. Carruthers hoed her garden and shooed away her cat. Frank Palmer thought of ways to cheat on his taxes.
Eddie Venturi installed a muffler at Pete's Automotive.
Billy Franklin unloaded produce from a truck behind the IGA Foodstore.
Gladys Cushing of Victor, New York, sought directions at Tip’s Food & Fuel.
Housewares clerk Tim Rieger quietly masturbated in the Kmart men's room.
Nancy Hardaway frosted a cake at Delbert's Bakery.
Billy Ray's mother folded towels in the basement laundry room.
Billy Ray's father found a crescent wrench for Mrs. Dobbs.
Billy Ray sat on a bench in front of Grant Park, tapping one foot to the Beach Boys blaring from his transistor radio, the other foot rolling back and forth a skateboard with a red stripe down the center that he painted himself. He gazed sleepily across the street in the direction of Roger Gilstrap's Texaco station, but saw only sandy, warm beaches and blue waves dotted with grinning surfers.
A red El Dorado convertible entered his line of vision and stopped smack in front of him at a red light. Behind the wheel was Margie Heinrich, blonde and tanned the color of honey, her breasts straining against a yellow tank top. Billy Ray cranked up "California Girls”:
"And the Northern girls with the way they kiss
they keep their boyfriends warm at night"
Margie winked and threw back her head. Her golden ponytail danced on bare freckled shoulders. She located the some station on her radio and Main Street was alive with Beach Boys. The light turned green, but Margie hesitated. She looked Billy Ray over, ever so slowly allowing a smile to form, then another wink, and then she gunned the big El Dorado down the street. Billy Ray eyed it for blocks before it turned onto Lake Argus Road.
He eased back into his bench, the sun warming his face. Billy Ray could smell salty breezes and feel the cool spray from the Santa Monica surf. He smelled coconut-scented suntan lotion oiling bronze bodies in bikinis.
Surf’s Up.
