The next day I am the crucifier. I arrive at the
side door of the only religious building I have ever known in the south side of
Peoria. I slip into the door behind the altar where the pastors meet and pray
with elders before the service. I wear the same billowy red and white robes
that the acolytes wear. I gran the cross
and walk out the door around the building entering the Community Hall, idling
outside the choir room where, already, it reeks of disinfectant and extremely
cheaply brewed Sunday morning coffee
served in military urns.
The choir is warming up doing vocal exercises. We
walk up the ramp and in twos and mill at the back of the church as mentally
challenged adults toll the bell overhead 33 times, one for each year of Christ.
There is a moment of eclipsed silent during the final gong of the bells as
Pastor Schudde and Associate pastor Disbro shuffle in front of the pastel
statue of our Lord.
The cross has a picture of a splayed-arm long haired
hippie. Each plank contains a dove, an olive leaf, a communion chalice and a
hand making a vertical stuck together peace sign.
The organist
is in her early 80’s and the organ always seems to have a brassy flare per her
intro. I am holding the cross so that the shadow of the lower-case t drips on
my forehead as I enter the church, a locomotive, leading in the choir, each
holding out their black choir folder in front of them. I am to walk slow, as if
I am a bride carrying a cross in lieu of a bouquet. As I enter the parish the
entire congregation swivels on their Sunday morning dress shoes facing the
direction of the chrome emblem I am ferrying,
I am at the urinal before Sunday school in the
bathroom that looks like an inside bottle of Listerine aiming for the
diminutive latrine puck when Eggplant Elmore, almost on cure, shows up and
starts talking to me. It’s like he can’t have a conversation unless it after
first service and I have my cock in my hand.
“ Did you know you clanged the cross again when you
set it down. Everyone in the church
looked at you.”
I tell him I know. I tell him that I even came in
early to practice and I did it fine in rehearsal.”
“I’m surprise they are still letting you be the
crucifier. I’d be really embarrassed if that was me and I was in front of the
whole congregation like that and made that much noise.”
“Look, Elmore, I’m trying to pee.”
Elmore says fine be that way before stating that
having difficulty urinating in the presence of males is an early indicator of
impotency. I try telling Elmore that I’m not impotent, I just have a hard time
juicing when obnoxious toady’s wallow behind my stance.
I am trying to finish up when David best walks in,
very fast, like a Tin soldier sans joints.
“So, I hear dyou were hanging out with Renae and
Laura and Kristy and the whole gang Friday night.” Elmore inquires. David is
washing his hands.
“Yeah, actually. I asked Renae out. We are dating.”
David Best stops. He looks stunned. Like we are
playing Laser Tag and are on the same team and I intentionally zapped him in
his ruby laser tag bubble inopportunely located on his chest. Immediately he inquires if we noted that the
Atlanta Braves one game one of the World Series.
“Glavine was lights out.”
I am still trying to finish aiming at the urinal
puck. Elmore swivels into the direction of Best.
“Did you hear. The two of the are dating. Dave is
dating your ex now.”
“You guys are dating?”
“Yeah. She’s my girlfriend. We went out Friday night
and I then I called her yesterday and asked her out over the phone.”
David Best is quiet.
“Hey, I know you guys dated last year.
“You were right about Renae’s dad. He’s really
cool.”
As I walk out into the parking lot after Sunday
School there are pamphlets planted like flattened tulips on the windshield of
all the parishioners cars. The pamphlets read, “Can a Christian Vote for Gov.
CLINTON?”
Mom says that our President is a God fearing man.
“He could still win the race. It’s going to be a
close one.”
***
I try calling my first official high-school
girlfriend three times that night but her line is always busy. Unlike Best or
Hale or our family she doesn’t have call waiting. Daintily I visualize Renae calling her
friends and availing the news that we are a bona fide high school couple,
inexplicably holding up her forefinger waiting for her future bridesmaids to
comment that it’s beautiful.
“Listen, Dave, I hate to be the one to tell you this
but I just got off the phone with Renae and she says you guys aren’t dating.”
There is something in the way D. Best say t he word aren’t which makes him sound like he is
a park ranger giving a lecture on fire safety and I have just inadvertently lit
a cigarette over a freshly spilled gasoline puddle in a dry pine forest.
‘Yeah, I just got off the phone with her. I think
you really confused her last night.”
I want to tell my best friend that he is confusing
me. I want to tell him that he badgered me all summer into calling Renae up and
asking her out.
“No. Listen I
asked her out last night. She said yes. I could feel her beaming on the other
end of the phone. We discussed our feelings. I told her that I practically
drool over her every aching tic of every eclipsed school clock second and she confessed
that she thinks about me also all the time and that our feelings are mutual.”
I called her
up and asked her. Apparently she thought you only asked her to go hang out at
the mall or something sometime in the near indeterminate future.”
“What!!!”
“Yeah, you’re not dating, man. Sorry.”
“Well if you noted Renae about this snafu why didn’t
you have her call me. We’re really tight and even if we’re not on the
boyfriend-girlfriend caliber we kinda have a friendship thing going.”
“Well. Renae tells me that she likes you but not in
that way.”
“What?” I say again. I am stunned. My heart feels
like it has a larger fissure in it than my leg.
“Yeah, I called her up and she was in the shower and
Larry Answered the phone…”
“Yeah, I like Larry. He cracks me up.”
Dave informs me rather militantly that Larry wants
me to address him as Mr. Holiday.
“Anyway, we ended up talking and he said that you
were looking at the other girls more Friday night in the car than you were Renae.
He then said that he knows your type and I’m sorry to say that I have to agree
with him.”
I have no clue what my friend is talking about. I
ask him what he means.
“he said that all you want is just to get in his
daughters pants and boast about it in the locker room and I have to agree I kind
of agree with him.”
Dave tells me sorry, bro. I am stunned.
“That’s just how all parents are. He was really cool
the other night when were were smashed into his Firebird and then dropped us
off Downtown at the game.:
“Yeah, well Larry says that he knows what you are
like because you remind him of himself when he was your age.”
I am confused. I swear David is jangling his
pronouns.
I hate to say it but I had to kind of agree with
him. You were running around all last summer trying to mount anything bipedal
with a pulse.
“I have no clue what you are talking about." I am
pissed that my lifelong childhood friend is trying to stab me in the back.
“Let’s see all those girls in your French class.
Than that girl from Washington in that play you were in. Then that older girl
from Richwoods who was really intelligent. Then that girl who goes to central
whom you used to skinny dip with while smoking marijuana.”
“David I was never smoking marijuana!”
I want to ask him why he is like this all of a
sudden. Dave iterates again that I do have to admit to myself that I did have a
rather productive summer so to speak.
“Anyway you guys are both friends and I would hate
for Renae just to be another notch in the tattered garrison belt that is your romantic
love life.’
I want to tell D. Best that I really felt sopped up
and used by Tina. That I was confused about what happen with Dawn especially
when she dissipated when everything was seemingly perfect. I want to tell him
that I fucked up over Andrea and that I bled tears over Anastasia from
Washington.
I want to tell my best friend since Kindergarten that
I don’t have time for this blathering. That
the stress fracture in my leg still hasn’t healed all the way and that I
should be focused on endeavoring to at least get a B in Cool Joe Thomas’s still
yet untaught BIO class and somehow augment my grade in Mrs. Donaghue’s-Peabody
Masochistic mathematics.
“When I was talking to Larry about all this on the
phone Renae apparently came in to the room and Larry asked her if you were
dating and Renae didn’t say anything.”
Dave is apologizing again for the mix up.
“Yeah, Larry likes to mess around, he was making you
appear as some sort of lothario. He was only messing around though. You have to
know Larry. He’s a really good guy."
***
***
“Renae says you guys aren’t dating.” Dave notes again on the phone.
“But I asked her out. I told her how much I enjoy being with her. I told her how much I want to hang out with her.”
“I don’t think she realizes that you guys are a couple.” He says again, very straightforwardly, as if he is marketing an insurance premium. as if he is trying to deliberately hurt me. As if he is trying to show me that after all this time I still have no where else to go.
***
I call David Hale. I tell him that I still can’t
move my leg all that well and that I thought I asked this angel out but
obviously I didn’t. Hale asks if I ever talk with Dawn. I say yeah I then add
sporadically. I then add that Dawn is a special friend. Hale retorts by stating
that he thinks he knows who Renae is and that she makes out with two or three
different football players a day. I tell Hale that he has the wrong girl.
I hang up the phone.
I hang up the phone.
I leave.
I am sick of taking shit from Mrs. Peabody on how
every time she blinks the lid of her eyes it looks like ticker tape unraveling
the final integers of
. I’m sick of pulling C’s in cool Joe
Thomas’s class which he never teaches.
I’m sick of how I worked so hard for something last
summer which never came.
I’m sick of how I was faster the weeks of the school
year than I am now.
The team is preparing their final workouts before
Regional this weekend.
I need to collect from Marge. I have been avoiding
her since I had my last racist joust with Tina two months ago. Normally I can catch Marge on a week when
Tina isn’t home.
She has made no endeavor to contact me since our
last altercation.
I am not limping as hard as I was earlier in the
day. I turn into the walkway I see Tina, by herself, wearing a bandana seated
in almost yogic posture on her front swing, She is swaying back and forth
taking almost strategic puffs from an unsuspecting Winston.
She looks like she has been crying.
The moment I see her she holds up her hand and makes
a claw. She is waving. She looks like she needs a friend.
I look down into my collection book and flip the address.
I swill. I pretend to be clumsy. I walk the opposite direction.
I pretend I have not seen her at all.
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