Chapter Six

I Was a Teenager Werewolf

The car decided for us cause we had to stop and cool down again. So we went to the closest town, New Naples, and cruised up and down the streets. The business part of New Naples wasn't too much—a dress shop, a gun shop, a regular grocery store and a little comer market, four or five restaurants, a funeral parlor, a barber shop and a beauty parlor. That was about it.

Where was we going to stay at? A motel would of cost too much, even if New Naples would of had one. "We need to find an old lady with rooms to rent," I said. Rusty turned the car around and we drove back up Main Street.

"I don't see no movie theater around here," I said. "They can't have a law against movies, can they?"

"Relax," said Rusty. "I seen a theater when we went through Harpertown."

"Whoa, slow down!" I said. 'There's our old lady!"

She was white-headed and fat, with a house dress that had lilacs all over it. Her house had new white paint on it, her lawn was cut, her bushes was trimmed. There was two window boxes on her porch, one had zinnias and one had geraniums. In the front window of the house there was a little blue sign with a red border, Rooms to Rent. The woman was sweeping the dirt off the sidewalk into the street, going slow and easy. She never looked up till we parked and got out of the car. I decided to slide out along the front seat on Rusty's side. We might make a bad impression if I climbed out over the back seat.

Rusty walked up to the woman and stuck out her hand. The woman said, "I better not touch you, honey, my hands are too dirty. You young ladies need a room? I've got one room empty upstairs, if you two girls want to go in together." She leaned her broom on the porch rail and we followed her up the stairs.

The room was clean and painted white and there was two windows that faced down on the street, but it was just barely big enough for two people that got along really good. It would look all right, once we rolled up the ugly rug and shoved it underneath one of the beds. There was two twin-size beds, one bedspread was green flowers and one was blue polka-dots. The landlady, her name was Evelyn Price, said, "Put yourself a hot plate in here if you want. You're welcome to come downstairs and watch teevee with me if you want to." I was glad, cause the worst part of this whole trip was I hadn't got to see "Gunsmoke."

"We'll take it," said Rusty. "That okay, Carol?"

"Sure," I said.

When we was on the landing, about to go down, the landlady pointed down the hall. "There's the bathroom, and this other brown door is the other bedroom. I got a real quiet lady that lives in there." She looked at us. "She works nights so you never see her. A nurse, a real nice quiet lady."

"That's good," said Rusty. 'We're real quiet too." But I thought, 'Well, I guess we better not play the radio up here." Me and Rusty liked the radio loud.

* * * 

I was lonely. I wished I had somebody to call up. Back at home I didn't call nobody up, but I was home then. It was weird being in somebody else's house, on somebody else's street. I wished Aunt Shirley lived in New Naples, it would have been nice to call her up. Maybe I could call long-distance.

Probably not, though. Far as I knew Shirley didn't have a phone, maybe there wasn't even electricity in Skeet.

They had mailboxes, though, every place had mailboxes. I had some paper to write on, but I had to go get a box of enve­lopes at the dime store. I come back and went upstairs and got a pencil off the dresser. I gathered up all the letter-writing stuff and put it on Evelyn Price's kitchen table, and poured up a cup of coffee. The coffee was nasty, tasted like it had been perking since Abraham Lincoln was a baby. I poured some out of my cup down the sink and put in plenty of milk. I brought my cup back to the table and hitched up my chair and got the pencil in a good grip.

You was supposed to put what day it was at the top of a letter, but I didn't know for sure what day it was, so I skipped it. Then I wrote "Dear," and had to stop. Dear what? Just "Dear Shirley" was too personal. Okay, what was her last name? Vivian's maiden name was Fletcher, and Shirley had never got married, so she must be a Fletcher too. I put "Dear Shirley Fletcher," then I scrunched that page up and started over with "Dear Miss Fletcher." So far so good. I was worn-out as hell, I took my cigarettes and went out to smoke on Evelyn Price's front porch.

When I come back and got hold of the pencil, I couldn't de­cide what to put underneath of "Dear Miss Fletcher." I slid the letter out of the way and started on the envelope. Up in the corner I put Carol Frehardt, c/o Evelyn Price, 104 E. Maple Street, New Naples, Missouri. Then in the middle I put down Miss Shirley Fletcher. Now what? She was probably on some Rural Route but which one I didn't know. So I had to put just her name and "Skeet, West Virginia." I had a postage stamp in my billfold, but it was stuck to my driver's license. I had to go upstairs and get another one.

I come back down and poured coffee in my cup and sloshed in some milk. It was so nasty I dumped out the old wet grounds and started a new pot. Okay, the envelope part was over, time to get serious on the letter. All I had so far was "Dear Miss Fletcher." It looked stupid with no date on it, I better find the newspaper and get the date. I looked around Evelyn Price's liv­ing room for her  newspaper but I couldn't find it, she must of threw it away already.

The coffeepot quit perking so I got a new fresh cup  and put a little milk in it.  I used up the last little bit of the milk so I thought I should run down to the Red & White One-Stop Gro­cery and buy another quart, but I made myself sit down and pick up my pencil. I started writing.

                Dear Miss Fletcher,

                How are you? I am all right. Me and Rusty are staying in Missouri
                a little while to  save up money. Then we are going on and getting
                jobs in Colorado. We have a nice room in a roominghouse. I am sure
                the roominghouse lady would give me a letter if you wrote one. Well, 
                I guess that's it for now.  Rusty says hi.

                Yours truly,
                Carol Frehardt

The next day we went to the employment office in Harpertown, they had a bulletin board with all the jobs in the whole county. They needed one secretary, eighty words a minute, two registered nurses, one Spanish teacher, and one jeweler with diamond-cutting experi­ence.

"Let's come back next week," said Rusty, "and see if they ever got any jobs a normal person could do."

When we got home, I called Elsie Pelton long-distance. "Hey, Elsie, how you doing?" I said. "I hate to tell you this, but we burned up your car. And besides that, I ain't coming back. You've got a right to be aggravated."

"Don't worry about it," Elsie said. "That station wagon was a piece of shit anyway. I'm glad somebody escaped from the fac­tory."

"You can have my Plymouth," I said. "It ain't a very good trade, but that's all I got now. Maybe when I get a job I —"

"Hush up," said Elsie. "You don't owe me nothing."

"Well, I burned up your car so I don't guess I ought to be asking favors," I said, 'but do you think you could maybe—"

"Pick your check up?" Elsie said. "Sure, honey. Where you want it sent to?"

* * * 

The next day I got up at seven o'clock. I tried to get Rusty up too, but she said let her sleep, so I took the beat-up, radiator-steaming station wagon, which would go twenty miles an hour,  and went looking for work. I went to every store and restaurant in New Naples. The only places I skipped was the barber shop and the funeral parlor. At a couple places they let me put in an application. Then a lady at the grocery store said, "Try nursing homes, they always need somebody."

When I got back to the roominghouse, I got out Evelyn Price's phone book and looked up Nursing Homes. I sat down at the kitchen table and copied down six addresses and phone numbers, and I put the list where I could find it the next day.

Then I went up to the bedroom to pack up the dirty laundry. I couldn't go look for no more jobs till I washed a pair of bobby socks and a blouse. Rusty was sitting on her bed, smoking and drinking a Budweiser.
"How'd you get that?" I said. "You're not twenty-one."

"The Red & White One-Stop Grocery," said Rusty. "I just put the beer on the counter with the cigarettes and a package of baloney. The girl never said nothing about it."

"You got any laundry to do?" I said. "I'm going over to Harpertown and wash clothes."

"I'll just do mine later on," she said. "Maybe I'll just stay here and fix up the room a little."

"Okay," I said.

* * *

On my way to the laundrymat, I passed by Enrico's House of Fine Spaghetti, on Oak Avenue. I seen somebody having spa­ghetti at Enrico's, sitting up in the front window seat and eating spaghetti and meatballs. It looked good to me. I decided to have some while I was waiting on my washers to get done.

So I put my clothes in the washing machine and come out of the laundrymat. On my way to eat spaghetti. I was waiting to cross the street on my way to eat spaghetti. There wasn't but one stoplight in Harpertown, but it was red when I wanted to go across. I was just kind of glancing around, and in the win­dow of Joy's Cottage Cafe I seen a sign that said help wanted. Really it said pǝʇuɐʍ dlǝɥ cause the sign was set in there upside-down. The window glass had a big old snaky crack running down, with duct tape holding the glass in.

Joy's Cottage Cafe was cruddy-looking, I never would have gone in there to eat. But maybe I could stand to work there a couple days a week. I went inside and there was two tables of people eating, and four or five tables that had dirty plates and forks on them. There was a sign taped on the cash register that said "Joy's Welcomes Your Business—In Cash," and a man was standing behind the counter. He had black hair and a grayish- black mustache. He was counting through a bunch of ones and turning them so George Washington was facing tire same way on all of them.

I was scared to talk to him but I did it anyway. "Hey, how you doing," I said. "Joy around?"

He give me a look like I come in asking for Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. "Joy?" he said.

"Yeah," I said. "It says Joy's Cottage Cafe out front. Don't Joy own it—this place?"

"I own it," he said. He put his George Washingtons in the cash register drawer and let the little clip come down on them. Bam. He shut the drawer. Wham.

"Oh," I said. "You hiring?"

"Need a dishwasher," he said. "Dollar-fifty an hour, work ten to three-thirty, wait tables if we need you. You want it?"

"Well," I said. "Yeah, I guess."

"All right," he said. "Come on back. I'll get you an apron."

"I got to go get my clothes out of the washer first," I said.

'Are you washing or working?" he said. "Get your clothes on your break. The bus tubs are in back. Go grab you one and get these tables cleared off."

Guy give me a green rubber tub and I had to go get the greasy dishes off the tables. Just as soon as a customer started running their bread around their plate to get the sauce, I had to grab up their dish, cause there was only about twelve plates and we run out of clean ones fast.

I washed the dishes in a deep metal sink, the bottom of it come almost down to my knees. After a while the bending over made my back hurt pretty bad. As soon as I washed the plates and the cups and the silverware I had to put it all in a little sink that had bleach water in it to kill germs. The clean dishes went back on Guy's shelf next to his grill. Then I took my bus tub and run out front and grabbed up more dirty dishes and brought them back.

I got done with the lunch junk about two-thirty and I hoped maybe it was time to take a break, or maybe go see the back doctor. But Guy brought me a box of lettuce heads and said, "Tear it all up in little pieces for salad, and put it in this empty tub." It was the same tub I brought the dirty dishes back with, and he didn't say wash it first but I did anyway. After I made salad I took out the trash. There wasn't a regular trash can, it was a thick metal can that looked like in World War Two they maybe kept some bombs in it or something. It weighed about a million pounds and I had to lift it way up to get the trash to go in the alley dumpster.

Then I peeled twenty pounds of potatoes, then I cut up man­go peppers. Then I washed up the pots and pans from lunch­time. Then Guy said, "Come out in the front and I'll show you which tables to wait when supper starts." So we walked around the edge of the restaurant one time while he went, "This'n, it's yours, Table Six. That one, it's Helen's. This'n, if s yours, Table Four. That one by the window, if s Helen's." I tried to keep a stiff upper chin, but I forgot everything he said. I couldn't point at one table in the place and say was it mine or was it Helen's. I didn't even know who Helen was.

When's Helen come in?" I asked Guy. He walked in the kitchen and I followed him. There was somebody already in the kitchen, she must of come in while me and Guy was out front. She was short and square-shouldered, a little bit chubby. Her complexion was dark, and her hair was black. She looked like she was about the same age as me. "Oh," I said. "Is that Helen?"

"No," Guy said. "That's Mary Lou, she's the baker. Helen'll be in in a little bit. Why don't you get your mop and see what you can do about this floor."

"Okay," I said, and he left me in the kitchen with Mary Lou. She took a dishrag and started wiping off a counter, without one noise or one look around. Just all business.

I didn't have time to stand around watching her work. I had to push the mop bucket outside and dump the greasy gray water out in the alley. Then I brought the bucket back in and filled it up with fresh water. After I filled it up, I couldn't get it out cause it was too heavy.

And here come a strong arm in and held the other part of the handle. We both lifted and it wasn't too bad. I looked up at Mary Lou's face, she had real pretty green eyes.

I should of been too tired to look close at anybody. If a movie star come in the kitchen right then, I would of said "Hi, movie star" and went right on doing what I was doing. But eyes that green, somebody has a pair of those and you look, tired or not tired. Pretty-looking but so strong I felt kind of funny, like I didn't want to look but I did. It wasn't just the green color, there was something besides that. When she looked at me I felt calm and true. But I didn't have time to be calm, I had floor to mop.

Instead of saying 'Thank you" when she helped me, I said, "I could of done it." Which probably hurt her feelings. Mary Lou didn't say nothing, she just went off and worked on her rolls for supper.

I wondered if I dared to go move my laundry from the washer to the dryer, decided not, and went ahead swept up the kitchen floor. The broom looked like somebody had stuck the business end of it in a fan. There wasn't a dustpan, not even a piece of one, so I had to take a sheet of newspaper and stand on the edge of it and try to sweep the dirt up on that. It didn't work real great.

The wet mop had about 3 strings on it and every one was just black with grease. The wringer on the mop bucket had a busted spring so I had to push it down slow and pull it up hard. It was probably the same one the Flintstones mopped their cave with.

I was pushing my poor little greasy mop strings back and forth under the milk cooler when something got hold of my shoulder and made me jump.

"Scare you?" said Guy. He laughed but I didn't. "I want you to finish up the dishes real quick cause we'll be needing you out front at five."

"Okay," I said. I was pretty tired out already but I figured I could wash out a couple coffee cups and whatever had got dirty since lunch. I stuck the mop in the bucket and pushed the whole deal into the corner next to the little sink. When I pushed my sleeves up and went over to the big sink, I about had a heart failure. The whole sink was full of pots and pans—sticky, burned-up pots too, and old crusty slop had run over the edge of some of them. There was a big wad of steel wool laying on the counter so I grabbed it and started scrubbing.

I had to leave a spaghetti pot and two greasy skillets for later, cause Guy come and got me. "Helen needs help out front," he said. "If s time to get ready for supper." I went out and seen a woman buying cigarettes from the machine. She had on a wait­ress apron, so I guessed she was Helen.

"You the new one?" she said. "What are you, boy or girl?"

"Girl," I said. "Woman, I mean."

"Whatever," Helen said. 'Take these." There was a plastic tray sitting of top of the cigarette machine. She took it down and said, 'Take these." When she give it to me, I seen salt and pepper shakers lined up like checkers, salt against pepper.

"Put two on each table," Helen said. She tore the plastic wrapper off her cigarette pack and dropped it down the wall behind the machine. "One each."

"No shit," I said under my breath, after I turned my back. I put the salts and peppers on the tables, and I poured up ice tea and milk, and put the forks and knifes in the boxes at the waitress station. All the waitress stuff was in a little cubbyhole by the ice machine. Helen sat down at Table Four and smoked two cigarettes in a row. I thought, "Guy's gonna yell when he sees her goofing off," but then he come in and messed up her hair a little and said, "Give me a ciggie, babe." She said, "Quit messing my hair," and I thought oh, great.

Men started coming in and they sat down like it was their kitchen table at home. Helen give me a order pad and a pencil with just barely a point. "Meat loaf or chicken—one piece dark, one piece light—string beans or com or both if they want it, mashed potatoes or french fries, coffee or Sanka goes with ev­erything, get your prices and tax off the thing stuck on the cash register. Get going."

"Okay," I said, like a fool. I went over to a table of three men, I didn't even care if it was my table or not. They was all talking till I got there, then it was like a radio turned off. Click—no talk. I tried to remember everything Helen said but I couldn't, so I just said, "Who wants meat loaf?" A guy in a brown plaid shirt said, "I do," and the other two didn't peep so I wrote down 1 LOAF, 2 CHICK.

"String beans be all right?" I asked the man in the plaid shirt. 'I guess," he said, and the other two just looked down at the table so I put down 1 BEAN, 2 CORN. They all looked like coffee drinkers, so I didn't ask.

I took my pad over to the next table and the men stopped talking. I felt like the curse of the mummy. Half the guys was shy or didn't care what they had, so I just made up my mind what to write if they didn't speak up quick. I got frustrated trying to get the right coffees to the right tables but finally ev­erybody had coffee or at least a cup. I took eleven tickets back to Guy, who was whacking off meat loafs and flipping them on plates as fast as he could go, which was fast. Pow pow pow, there went a scooper of corn, then pow pow pow, there went string beans. He shoved the plates out to the edge of the counter.

"There's your Table Ten,” he said.

Helen come in behind me and threw her tickets over the counter so he pushed the rest of mine out of the way and started in on hers. I grabbed Table Ten and went back out.

Some customers wanted chicken and got meat loaf, and some ordered coffee and got Sanka, but everybody got something. They got it fast and they got it hot, cause Guy was fast at the steam table. Helen was quick too—she took a wet rag around to all the tables as soon as the customers left and she stacked the dirty plates up on the corner and wiped down the tabletops. She done hers and mine too. I thought, "Well, finally she's helping me out a little bit. About time."

When the place was empty, I come around to clear my last few tables off. Helen went back to her sitting place and smoked up a storm. Guy come out to sit with her. I went and got me a bus tub and started loading it up with supper plates and bread plates and water glasses and coffee cups and forks and knifes and spoons. I just done my tables, not Helen's. She didn't move, maybe Guy was going to do her tables for her. I cleared my Table Six, the customers never left me a cent. Those cheap­skates. The next table, over by the cracked window, didn't have no tip either. I cleared five tables before my bus tub got full, and so far I had not made a nickel. I guess Helen saw me look­ing sad, cause she said, "I've got yours in here, hon," and she shook her apron pocket so I could hear the money banging around. "I'll divvy it up here in a minute, after I finish my ciggie."

"Okay," I said and took my pile of dirty greasy crud into the kitchen. I was starting to feel like Cinderella when they wouldn't let her go to the midnight pumpkin party. Helen shouldn't of grabbed my money without asking me. Maybe her people was worse tippers than mine was, and if we went half, I'd get shorted. But then I started remembering how some of my meat loafs got chicken and some of the Sankas got coffee. Maybe Helen was the one who'd get the short end. Either way I'd rather I done mine and she done hers.

But I didn't speak. I just carried my bus tub in and out an piled up all the dishes on the kitchen counter. I was glad to see a skinny teenage boy standing by the sink, putting a apron on over his clothes. "How you doing?" he said. "You washing in the day now?" and I said yeah. He looked at the bus tub. "That all of it?"

"Just about," I said. "Few more out front."

I got my tables finished, and Guy took the tub from me and started clearing Helen's tables. "Just run your sweeper out here," he said, "and you're done. You want anything to eat? There's meat loaf left."

"No," I said. I was thinking about my socks and underwear and towels sitting in a Speed Queen at the Scrub-a-Dub laundrymat. It was wet and tangled up all together, probably started to rot by now. I was about to barf, anyway, thinking about meat loaf hunks floating around in the dishwater. Every piece left a grease trail swirling around in the water, the water was all red from the catsup.

:Just get under the tables good," Guy said, "and you can go. The sweeper's back by the ice machine. And get that plastic up, would you?" He squatted down and pointed under the cigarette machine. I bent over and seen about thirty cigarette wrappers laying under there. "I guess," I said.

When I was done and started wrapping my sweeper cord up, Guy come back out. I said, "I'm going to go get my clothes out of the washer. When you want me back tomorrow?"

"Oh, let's see, sweetheart," he said. He was standing right next to me and he put his arm around me, like it was no big deal. All of a sudden we was best friends, I guess. "How about you come in at noon tomorrow. Hang on a sec and Helen'l! bring your tips out to you."

One time I seen in Dear Abby that if somebody put his arm on a woman, she was supposed to act like she was a fence post. But the stiffer I tightened up, the more Guy squeezed. I couldn't figure out what Dear Abby would of done next, maybe I could accidentally step on his foot. No, too fake.

Then Guy let go real quick, and my mind said, "Hey, that Abby's smarter than I thought." After I second I seen why Guy let me loose. Helen was coming through the kitchen door. She must not have seen Guy jumping back where he was. Guy looked suspicious to me, it ain't normal to stand three feet over from a person to talk. Helen give me a smile which was pretty fake but then, when you're a waitress, you got to be in the fake smile business.

"Here you go," Helen said, and she held out her hand like she'd made me something special out of construction paper. I took the change. Waiting tables, I'd made two quarters and a dime. Eleven tables, I brought food and coffee and catsup and mustard and extra bread out to eleven tables, and I earned sixty cents for it. I could of stood out on the sidewalk and asked people, "Give me a dime," and I would of got more money. Something wasn't right.

Up till then I never had nobody just up-front cheat me before. I mean, Redskin Brooms had cheated everybody, but legal— hard work and low pay. But Redskin never tried to short us on hours, cause there was too many broke women that knew their multiplication table.

Helen and Guy was my first for-real cheaters. He cheated on her, trying to feel me up. Both of them cheated me, trying to starve me out. I looked right at Guy and Helen and they looked right back at me. I thought, "I quit, I quit, I quit" but then there was that old room rent, we owed that again in five days. No, four. I didn't have the money. Okay, I'd work a week. One week, then after that I would say "Later, 'gator."

I stared Guy in the eyeballs, and I pretended like I was The Woman with X-Ray Eyes. I kept on X-raying Guy till he knew for sure that I was wise to him.

"See you in the morning," I said.

Guy said, "Okay." He put his arm around Helen and gave her a real sweet hug. She said "Quit it" and give him a cute smile. I never said bye, I just walked through the kitchen and opened up the back door and there was Mary Lou.

"See you tomorrow," I said.

"Bye," Mary Lou said, and I seen her look at something behind me. I turned my head—it was Guy and Helen coming through the kitchen door.

"Bye," Mary Lou told me again. I thought, ""Didn't you al­ready say bye?" Then Mary Lou started talking out of one little comer of her mouth. All my life, I had seen gangster rats on the cartoons do that, but not nobody real.

"Watch your tables close," Mary Lou said sideways, real real quiet. "Soon as the customers stand up, go get a dirty plate or something off, and rake your tips off or she'll get them."

Mary Lou never waited to see did I get the picture, she just walked into the kitchen and hung her apron on the nail on the soap shelf. She must of been going on break or something. I wanted to wait in the alley for her, but I chickened out. She might think I was like Rusty was, that I liked women. Anyway, I had old soggy clothes in the washing machine. I went down the alley quick, before Mary Lou come out the kitchen door. I walked over to the Scrub-a-Dub slow and smoked a cigarette.

I was way too tired to be messing with wet clothes. They wasn't even wet any more, they'd been in the washer for a long time. I threw the whole big tangle of clothes in the dryer. But the laundrymat owner come up to me, right when I was about to slam the dryer door.

"How long you gonna run that?" he said. "We close at eight- thirty."

"What time is it?" I said. I looked up at the Speed Queen clock over the middle dryer. Twenty-five minutes after eight.

"I can just run them five minutes," I told him. "Then I'll hang them up at home."

"You got to leave time to get them out and bag them," he said. "Hon." He looked like a shark but not as friendly.

I stood there, like a dummy, looking at my old tangled-up wet towels and socks and stuff. I slammed the dryer door shut and put in dimes till I run out. I clicked the little dryer knob after the last dime and the clothes started twirling around.

"I'll come get them in the morning," I told the laundrymat man. I shouldn't of been aggravating him, there was only one laundrymat in Harpertown. Hell with it, I could wash my socks out in the bathtub.

* * *

I got back to Evelyn Price's rooming house about nine, with a sack of greasy cheeseburgers, extra onions, in my hand. No Rusty. Her wet towel was laying on the floor where she dropped it. If we was going to be room-sharing for a while, she better start picking up her mess. I put her skirt and her blouse in the laundry basket. While I was at it, I dumped out her nasty ashtray and washed it out good.

Then I pulled my shoes off and let them hit the floor, clunk clunk. I stretched out on the bed and ate my cheeseburgers and looked at a Photoplay. It was from last year, but who cared. The stories was always the same in Photoplay. Movie stars was get­ting a divorce, movie stars was refusing to be on the set with each other, movie stars was dating people too young for them. But it took up time till Rusty got back to keep me company. I read all the stories, and then all the ads like Poems Set To Music, Can You Draw This Elf?

I shut my movie book, and I started thinking about Marlene, and all her sisters, Clara and Tallulah and Greta. Grandma Talbert went to the movies every week, and she always wished she had one more girl so she could of named her after Claudette Colbert.

When Marlene and her sisters was growing up in Kentucky, they never even had electricity in the house until Marlene was seven- teen. Grandma Talbert had already been dead for a year. But while Grandma was alive, all the girls got their pocket money for the movies. Grandma wanted Marlene and the rest of them to see what a person could have if they got a chance. None of them was going to have their chance, no Talbert ever had a chance. Seemed to me Grandma Talbert was just teaching the girls how to get their hopes up.

That’s where Marlene got ruined, she always had her hopes up. She hoped on going to high school, and she quit in eighth grade cause the city high school was too far from the farm. No school bus in the sticks. She hoped on marrying a husband that would take care of her, but Marlene had to marry Poppy after Grandma Talbert died.

Poppy must of been nicer when Marlene married him. All I remembered is him being mad. When Poppy got mad, he quit his job, and he got mad about every three weeks. Everything was against him, the boss and the President and the damn peo­ple that made damn Ford cars that didn't even damn run so a guy was late and lost his job. And when Poppy got sick and went in the V.A. hospital, the damn V.A. doctors was against him too.

Marlene hoped on Poppy getting saved while he was sick, cause she was a Baptist and she had to sit all day with Poppy. It would of been happier for her if Poppy was a Baptist too. But he never would hear her Jesus talk. Jesus was against him, had to be—Jesus never done a thing for Poppy but lose his job for him and give him insides that didn't work right.

Me and Marlene went to see Poppy in the hospital twice a week, Tuesday and Friday. He died when he was thirty-two, I was in junior high. One Tuesday we went in his room and he was out of his head, talking crazy and cussing. Marlene give me a dollar and said, "Here, you go down to the lounge and get us coffee, bring me two sugars." Coming back, I got to the open door and I heard Poppy say, "I never cared nothing for you, I just married you to get a baby boy. And you give me a in-be­tween, not boy not girl, not shit. She's gonna be like you, except meaner and she won't care nothing for you either. Cause when everything goes bad on her, she'll know just which one she's like, you or me. Just which one she's like."

That was the last thing he ever said, when I come in the room Marlene was standing there, waiting for him to go on. But he was dead. It was hard to tell, except his chest wasn't going up and down. While he was sick he couldn't get his breath, I could always see him gasping. But now he was quiet so I knew he was dead. I give Marlene her coffee and I went down to the nurse station to get somebody.

* * *

I had took the Photoplay and rolled it up and let it out and rolled it up the other way and let it out. When I got up off the bed the insides of the whole magazine fell out of the cover part. I didn't mean to tear it up, I was going to save it cause Rusty might want to look at it. It had something about Gordon Macrae in it, Rusty liked him a little cause of his wavy hair. I left the loose pages lay and I went downstairs, maybe Evelyn Price had the teevee turned on.

Evelyn was watching a horror movie, and she scootched over on the sofa so I could sit with her. She was eating crackerjacks, and she held them out for me to take some. I didn't want none. My stomach was upside-down. When the commercial come on, they showed the name of the movie, I Was a Teenager Were­wolf. The werewolf went to high school and when the bell rung, he turned crazy and killed people. He reminded me of the boys that I went to Arsenal Technical with.
Evelyn stayed up to see what happened to the werewolf, but I got so sleepy I couldn't sit up. I should of went right to bed when I got home from Joy's. I thought I better go up and get what sleep I could.
"Goodnight, Evelyn," I said.

"You got that letter, didn't you?" she said.

"Huh?" I said.

"I put it by the toaster in the kitchen," Evelyn Price said. "I thought sure you'd see it."

"Oh," I said. "I'll take it upstairs with me when I go."

I got the letter from the kitchen and started opening it up while I was walking upstairs. I didn't look at the envelope, I knew it was from Shirley.

               Dear Carol,

          Oh no, Kid, how did you let that Rustoleum
          drag you to Misouri?

          Are you too girls drinking and car­rying on, or 
          are you getting XXXXX Serious and saving your
          money?

          Don't get stuck there—everybody that ends up 
          wrong was trying to go somewere else.

          How are you fixed for $$$? Your car must be broke
          or else you would be where you wanted. If the car 
          man wants all your $$$ to fix it, you can call me. 
          I've got a littel in the bank. Here's some­thing for 
          you, and give one to Rusty.

          Your Aunt Shirley

I turned the letter over, but that's all there was. She must have forgot to put in whatever it was. When I folded up the letter and tried to put it in the envelope, it wouldn't go. The envelope had two lumps inside. The lumps was two twenty-dollar bills, folded up teeny-tiny and stuck to the inside with scotch tape. I straightened out Rusty's money and put it on her dresser. I put mine back in the envelope with the letter and put the whole thing in my top drawer. I needed something special to save.

I brushed my teeth and laid out my clothes for the morning and wound up the alarm clock. Right when I turned off the light switch, the door opened up and Rusty come in. "Hiya," she said. "You going to bed early?"
"Yeah," I said. "I got a job today, I got to get rested up."

"That's good," Rusty said. "Do you care if I turn on the light a minute so I can get ready?"

"Go ahead," I said. Now she was close to me, I could smell the beer on her. It couldn't be her breath, too strong, maybe she spilled some on her shirt.

"Where's it at, the job?" Rusty said. She pulled the shoes off her feet, she didn't untie them first. Rusty was hard on shoes.

"It's called Joy's, over by the highway," I said.

"I've seen it," said Rusty. "It looks pretty creepy, is the food okay?"

"I don't know," I said. "I never ate none of it. The boss is a lecher, his girlfriend steals tips."

"You're gonna go back in the morning?" said Rusty. She turned the light out.

"Just for a week," I said. "I mean, I'm already there. I might as well get one paycheck. We need the money."

"It's hard for me to look for anything," Rusty said. "You need the station wagon to get to work and all that."

"You could drop me off," I said. "Then you'd have the car."

"The wagon ain't running good, anyway," said Rusty.

"If we get some money, we can get it fixed," I said. "A lady I saw today said try nursing homes, they always need help. I wrote down a list already."

"I need to stay home tomorrow," Rusty said. "I'm not feeling that great. But maybe the next day."

"Whatever," I said.