Chapter Two

I Visit the Army

Rusty always wanted to hear army stories, but I never liked to tell them. I used to say, "Rusty, the army is a drag. Period." But one time she was on me and on me, tell her about boot camp, what was boot camp like.

So I said, you want a story, here's a story: This girl named Celia that I knew pretty good, she didn't fold her under- wear right one time. Well, she folded it right, just exactly in thirds like they showed us, but the top pair got screwed up when she was putting it in her duffel. You had to pack your duffel this certain way—socks, underwear, personal items, whatever, each thing had to be in order. So Celia's duffel got inspected, and that scrunched-up underwear got found. There was a sergeant and an officer both doing the inspecting. First they asked her a bunch of stupid questions about underwear, duffels, everything they could think of. Then they made her put her underwear on her head like a shower cap. She had to walk around the barracks saying, “l am a bad recruit, I am a bad recruit."

Everybody else got to go back to doing their regular shit, but Celia had to keep on walking back and forth saying she was a bad recruit. She tried saying it quiet, but the sergeant sneaked back and caught her and made her drop and do twenty. That's what happened if you screwed up, or they thought you screwed up, or somebody said you screwed up. They'd tell you "Give me two-oh" and you better do twenty perfect push-ups or they would make it really bad for you.

That's what the service was about, wearing drawers on your head. And blanket parties, where they threw a blanket over you and everybody did something to you, kicked you or hit you. Your friends did. At first I figured I'd get adjusted, you know, but I never did. The army, you didn't get adjusted to it, not even if you were career. The only thing that kept my mind sane was letters from Rusty. I couldn't read her scribbles but she sent me a letter every week. Usually just half a page of notebook paper, maybe a page, but when you're lonely a page a week means a lot.

I wanted out of the service but I was scared to try and quit. Because if I didn't make it out, it was going to be Shit City for the rest of my enlistment, and I mean Shit City.

I think Celia wanted out too, that's why she kept screwing up. Celia got hassled about those scrunched-up drawers, and that showed how easy she could be hassled. So Celia was in trouble, no matter what went wrong, Celia got it. Then her old lady really messed Celia up. She sent candy to Celia in boot camp, can you believe it? Like it was cookies-and-milk camp, Girl Scout camp. It was boot camp and Celia's old lady sent her a Whitman sampler for her birthday. Nobody had time to throw Celia a pretty little party, cause we was all standing in the barracks, watching a sergeant push candy in Celia's mouth. They made her eat the whole box, two and a half pounds, in front of everybody.

“You still want more?" the sergeant said, laughing. None of us better laugh, cry, anything. "Not full yet?"

And Celia, every bite, she'd try to say, "Give me some more, sergeant, please" with her mouth crammed. Big hunks of chocolate falling out of her mouth, white sticky insides of candy was mixed with spit dripping and running all down her uniform in front. She'd about strangle every time she had to answer the sergeant. Then she'd open up her mouth, candy all chewed up and falling out, and the sergeant stuck in a chocolate-covered cherry, a caramel cluster.

I told the army I was queer. Not right then in the barracks, but later on. It took me months and months to get it worked out, I worried how could they get me if I said this or that. Finally I decided I would say I was a dyke. I wasn't then, that was the funny part. I wasn't anything then. But I'd heard what to do—saying you were a queer always got people out. But I had to go slow and careful, plan out what to say. I couldn't say I was born like that, cause back at the recruiter office La Vonne had made me sign a paper saying I was not a deviant.

So I said I turned queer while I was asleep. I was fine when I went to sleep, something happened. I went to take my shower, I got overcome by unnatural desires when I seen the other recruits naked in the shower. I was very sorry, I didn't want to screw up, please let me out goodbye.

They said okay. "Sure," they said, every time I had to tell what happened, I'd go see someone to get some paper signed, and they'd say "sure." I thought they meant "Sure you did, have a nice time in prison,' don't write." But it was real easy to get out. They meant "Sure, fine, happens all the time, we understand, sign down at the bottom, been nice knowing you, you're a civilian." After I turned myself in, some officer turned me in. It was politics, she got caught in a queer bar and the only way she kept from getting her butt cooked was turning me in. Because they would just let you out, honorable discharge, if you told on somebody.

Everybody wanted to turn me in, since I already told the army I was funny. They could get credit for me and then they wouldn't have to turn in their best friend. Nobody wanted to turn their best friends in, the army made them. I might have turned somebody in. I can say I wouldn't ever do it in a million billion years but I'm glad I didn't have to stay in and find out. The army wanted to get every dyke out they could, because somebody made a report that that there was a bunch of lesbians in the army. There was a bunch. Some people was mean to them, but I left them alone. They never bothered me, really some of the lesbians was better people than the mean women that had boyfriends.

Eight people had turned me in, but it wasn't held against me. I guess this shit happened all the time. Every year or two somebody made a report, then everybody turned in everybody else, four or five recruits got thrown out, every- body shut up. When I went in for my hearing, the army said since you came in on your own first to discuss your problem, we will let you go. Seek psychiatric care.

So the officer that told on me first, her name was Dotty Bascomb, she got out. The other ones that turned me in, the seven besides Dotty, they got out, and I got out. I only had six months left in my enlistment anyway, I could of stayed and got a regular discharge, and the benefits and all. But I wouldn't chance it, it was better for me to go early. A lot of bad things can happen in six months. I flew in an airplane home, and went to stay with my old lady, till I could get someplace else to live.

* * *

Marlene's house was the same junky, broke down, paint-peeling crummy ugly place. Marlene was the same junky, broke down, paint-peeling crummy drunk old lady. But she didn't worry me, cause I never seen her much. Marlene wasn't even there when I got home from the army. I walked in the door and put my suitcase in my old room. There was a bunch of junk all over my bed, a tangled-up wad of clothes hangers and a box full of old books. I moved it all down on the floor, and unpacked my suitcase.

The first couple days I was glad to be home, away from the stupid army. Marlene was always at a tavern or visiting one of her drunk friends, Nancy Rickens or Patsy from across the road. But at least all my movie magazines was still stacked up in my bedroom, Marlene didn't throw them out while I was in the service. So if the movie on "Matinee Double Feature" was too stupid to watch, Montgomery Clift or somebody like that, then I could look at my Photoplays and put them in order. Sometimes I put them in order by the date. I had three years, every issue, even in the army I got them all. Hell, it was easier in the army, I had money in the army. Sometimes I sorted out the Photoplays different, by the movie star that was on the cover, like Liz Taylor or Mia Farrow. Marlene made fun of me for keeping all of them, but once in a while she liked to look at a Photoplay too. She thought Eddie Fisher was cute. That was Marlene for you, no sense.

It took me three days to get crazy sick of hanging around the house. I missed Rusty, but I hadn't went over to see her yet. I never even wrote and told her I was getting discharged from the army. At first I wouldn't write cause I was scared the army would steal my letter and use it against me. Then later on, when I was safe, I don't know why I didn't write. I shouldn't of been shy, we was friends and all, but I didn't send her a birthday card or nothing. Here I was home three days and Rusty thought I was still in the army.

I figured I'd see what she was up to, and maybe see if she knew if the broom factory needed anybody. I called her trailer but I couldn't get her, I called three or four times a day, two days in a row, no answer.

So the third day I got in the old lady's crummy Chevy, and drove over to Rusty's place on Hunter Pike. Somebody else lived in her trailer, I could tell by the new Buick in the driveway. And there was a yellow plastic daisy that spun around in the wind. Rusty would never bother putting one of those in the yard. Whoever had the daisy and the Buick had a pet duck too, a real live duck, it come up and quacked at me when I got out of the car. A watch duck. I thought I might get a beak in the butt, but the duck stayed pretty well back. I went up to the trailer door and knocked. A guy answered the door in his baggy undershirt with a big hole over the gut. He didn't know where Rusty was, who was Rusty.

So I drove across town to where Rusty's old lady Vivian lived at. I pulled into Vivian's driveway, and brought her mail up to her from the mailbox. Which maybe would improve her disposition enough to tell me where Rusty was, if she knew.

When Vivian opened up the door, she was real thrilled to see me, I could tell. She let cigarette smoke roll out her nose and said, "Got throwed out of the army, I see."

She didn't open up the screen door and invite me in. I held her mail out and she opened the screen door up enough to take it. Her nails was dirty.

"Honorable," I told her. "I got a honorable." It wasn't none of her business what happened. "Where's Rusty at?"

"Either work or jail," said Viv. "You figure it out."

"Where's her house at?" I said, stepping down off the porch so I'd be ready to go.

Vivian opened up the screen door and held out one of the letters I had give her. I stepped back on the porch and took it out of her hand.

"Her address is on there," Vivian said.

Up in the corner of the envelope it said "R. Stone, 645 N. Rural Avenue." It was addressed to Vivian, and it didn't weigh much, maybe one sheet of paper inside it.

"Don't you want the letter?" I asked her, and I started tearing the corner open where the stamp was.

"I couldn't read that chicken scratch," she said. "She's on night shift, they go in at five."

"Okay," I said. "Maybe I can catch her at home, then."

"Not today," said somebody. I turned my head and seen Rusty's brother Jack, the married one that was always getting thrown out. He was coming through the front yard, with no shirt on and a bottle of Schlitz in his hand. "Rusty took off to go get Shirley at the Greyhound." He squeezed past Viv and went in the house.

"Shirley? Who's that?" I stepped back off of the porch.

"Shirley Temple, who do you think?" Vivian got her big laugh out after all. If she was in the movies, she'd of gave herself the academy award.

* * *

I went over to 645 North Rural Avenue, the address on Rusty's envelope. It was a silver forty-foot trailer. Nobody was home. I turned over the envelope and wrote on the back, "I'm back in town. Give me a call over at Marlene's. Carol." I put the envelope inside the screen door and went down the street to buy cigarettes at the Rexall Drugs. On my way home, I passed by Rusty's trailer again and seen a car in the driveway.  A red Ford, in pretty good shape, but old.

I went to the front door, and the envelope was gone. A woman I didn't know opened the door.

She said, "Hi, you want Rusty?" and she held the door open. She turned around and yelled, "Rusty! Your friend's here!"

"Who is it?" yelled Rusty.

The woman looked at me.

"Carol," I said. "I know Rusty."

"Carol!" yelled the woman. "Her name's Carol! She says she knows you!"

"Carol?" Rusty come into the living room with her toothbrush in her hand, white foamy toothpaste all over her chin. "Frehardt, what’re you doing here?"

"I went AWOL," I said.

Rusty about swallowed her toothpaste.

"No, I'm lying," I said. "They let me out."

"How come?" said Rusty. "Shit, wait here a sec, I got to spit." She went in the restroom and started the water in the sink. She called out, "That's Aunt Shirley—did you get introduced?"

I looked at Aunt Shirley, and she smiled at me. "We are now, I guess," I yelled.

When Rusty come back in the living room, she was wiping her face off with a white towel. "How come they let you go?"

I looked at Shirley, then I said, "It'll take too long to explain. Your aunt don't want to hear all this."

"You can talk in front of her," said Rusty "She ain't like Vivian."

Even if Shirley was ten times nicer than Viv, you don't talk about certain things in front of an aunt. I wanted to tell Rusty how the army thought I was a lesbian, but right then it just wouldn't seem all that funny.

Rusty went and got her coat out of the living room closet. Her hair was a lot shorter than I remembered. "Come on, go with us, Shirley and me are going to the armory to see All-Star Wrestling."

"I can't," I said. "I have to get the car back to Marlene, she has someplace important to go. Riley's Carry-Out Liquors, probably."

"We'll follow you," Rusty said. '"Back to Marlene's. Then you can ride with us. Come on!"

"All right," I said.

Dick the Bruiser and the Mighty Atom beat the Turk and the Hangman, tag team. The Turk had a piece of metal hid in the waist of his shorts, but the Bruiser and the Mighty Atom won anyway.

We had to push through the crowd to get out of the armory, but we made it to Rusty's car. We dropped Shirley off at Rusty's trailer, and then we went to the Dairy Queen and got Spanish dogs with extra onions, like we used to. We both liked extra onions.

Rusty was better-looking than she used to be. Her hair was cut shorter, sort of like a pixie but shorter than that even. It looked good on her. She had on a nice sweater (real wool not the cheap stretchy kind), and a silver ring on her little finger.

"I never seen you wear jewelry before," I said.
Rusty looked at her little ring and then she went red, just absolutely red. I guess she was embarrassed for doing something so girly. So I changed the subject.

"You'll never believe the shit I handed them in the army," I said. "You know why they let me out? I told them I was a lez."

Chewed-up chili dog splattered all over the car dashboard. "You think you're smart, don't you?" said Rusty. She took a paper napkin and wiped her chin off. Her face was paler than white ice cream.

I couldn't believe it. Me and Rusty had never got in a fight, never, since fifth grade.

"Well, it don't hurt nobody," she said. "It don't hurt you. So if you're going to go around calling names, well, I guess I can drive you home just as easy." She started up the car, but I put my hand on the shift lever so she couldn't put it in reverse.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "What’d I say? God, Rusty, quit it."

"I seen you looking at my hair," she said. "And my ring. And then calling names. Your own friend. I thought you was better."

"Calling names?" I said. "Calling names? I didn't call you any name. I was just saying, all I said, I was just saying how I told the army I was—" The whole picture came in my mind, clear as teevee. "Oh damn, oh hell, I never thought. I don't care, there was lots that way in the army, it didn't bother me. I just thought it was funny, because, well, shit. You want another Spanish dog? Here, I'll get it."

I jumped out and went for the end of the line at the Dairy Queen order window. The line was long so I had time to think. I decided to just act normal when I got back in the car. It was up to her to say anything else about it.

It seemed like I should of been more surprised, but it all seemed so regular and normal. Rusty never was boy-crazy, that I could tell. When we went out with the Easterday twins, she never giggled or acted like she was going to hit Randy Easterday on the arm. Course you'd have to be pretty hard up to feel passionate about an Easterday. But still.

The woman pushed up the little glass window and I said, "A Spanish dog. Extra onions." She slid the window down and went to get it.

"Aw, aren't you sweet?" said somebody behind me. "A hot dog for your girl friend." He laughed.

I turned around. It was Billy Ortgrave standing there with his stupid friend Tim Rogers. Billy had on his fake football jacket with leather sleeves. It didn't have any felt letter T on the front, cause Billy got kicked off the squad for fighting.

I didn't give him the satisfaction. I played like I was ignoring him and I got ready to pay for the Spanish dog.

My hand was shaky and so I couldn't get the money out.

"Extra onions?" said Billy Ortgrave. "Why is she getting her date extra onions? That won't be nice when they're kissing."

Tim Rogers thought Billy was real funny. He had a big fat laugh to go with his big fat head.

Billy wasn't done yet. "But maybe it ain't kissing they're gonna do. What do you reckon she wants that hot dog for?"

Tim Rogers was about to pee on himself laughing.

"Why don't you get her a foot long, Carol?" said Billy.

Now about eight people in line behind me were laughing. "Your girl friend would love a foot—"

I grabbed the napkin dispenser off the counter and hit him on the forehead with it. "Ow," he said. "Shit."

"I'll hit you again," I said. I held that metal box up, ready to go. "I will. You too, Tim, you retard. Leave me the fuck alone. You retards."

About then I saw the front end of a Ford Falcon come up over the sidewalk, with Rusty behind the steering wheel. She chased Billy Ortgrave all across the parking lot with that car. She would of run him over, too, but he climbed on top of the trash cans next to the back fence, and jumped over into the back lot of Certified Transmission Repair.

Rusty backed the Falcon up, and I got in. The girl at the Dairy Queen window was still holding out the Spanish dog. That stupid Tim Rogers didn't even run when Billy did, and I stuck my head out to tell him off. But I couldn't think of nothing, so I put my head back in. Besides, Tim's car was faster than the Falcon, if he wanted to get shitty about the whole thing.

* * *

The next day I was in the kitchen fixing me something to eat, and the phone rang. "I'll get it," I said. Course I'd get it, my old lady was passed out. It was Rusty calling me up. "Hey, Carol, do you want to go with me and Shirley over to the Wigwam for supper?"

"I don't know. Hang on," I said. I went over to the closet and looked in my coat pocket. The old lady hadn't found the ten I was keeping in there. I came back and picked the phone up. "Sure," I said. "I'll go. We don't got to dress up, do we?"

"Nah, you can wear pants," Rusty said.

I got in the old lady's bomb about seven-thirty and went over to Rusty's trailer. Her and Shirley was ready to go, so when I pulled in the driveway they shut the front door behind them and got in the car. But as soon as Shirley got in she had to jump right back out and go get her cigarettes. Once she got out it was real quiet in the car, me and Rusty just sat there breathing. We was embar- rassed. It wasn't her liking girls that was embarrassing, it was being so personal. If I’d of found out she was in love with a boy, I'd of felt the same. We was best friends, but not the tell-everything kind.

"How come Shirley's got on that brown wig?" I said. When Shirley had first got in the car, I didn't even recognize her. Yesterday, she was blonde-headed, blonder than Tammy Wynette.

"She put it on to go see Vivian," said Rusty. "She puts peroxide on her hair but she can't let Viv find out cause Shirley's a Holy Roller, they're against peroxide."

"She's a Pentecostal?" I said. "It figures, I guess. She talks real country, and they're all Pentecostals in thecountry. Where's she from again, West Virginia?"

"Yeah," said Rusty. "Skeet, West Virginia. All Vivian's family's from there. That's what Skeet is, Vivian's people. Shirley has sixty acres of tobacco. Ever since her mother and daddy passed away, she lives on their farm and takes care of it."

"Remind me to forget to go down there," I told her. "A whole town of Vivians. That guy on Twilight Zone—"

"Rod Sterling?"

"Yeah, why don't he make that show there?" I said. 'The Town of Doom."

"They're not all like Vivian," said Rusty, while Shirley was coming back out of the trailer. "Besides, Viv's not that bad."

"Well, she's your old lady," I said.

"She ain't either," said Rusty. "She's just my stepmother."

"Oh yeah?" I said. That was Rusty. When she told you shit it was blam, right out there, the six o'clock news. Special bulletin, Vivian was not her mother. "Well, who's your old lady, then?" I asked her, but Shirley opened up the car door so we couldn't say nothing else about it.

The Wigwam was pretty fancy. One end looked just like a big teepee, with Indian signs all over it, like zigzags and lightnings and suns with sun-rays sticking out all around. Then there was a straight regular part of the building that stuck out sideways from the teepee, and that was where you went in at. There was Indian stripe blankets on the walls, hung up like curtains, and I Visit the rattles and beads and Indian things all over. There was a little Wigwam boy on the menu, he had on his father's war bonnet, way too big for him. They didn't make the waitresses dress up like squaws, though.

So Shirley had a Big Chief, and me and Rusty had cheeseburger platters. With extra onions. When the waitress went away, Shirley asked me did extra onions cost extra wampum.

"Huh?" I said.

"She's kidding around," said Rusty. 'Indian money is called—"

"I knew that," I said. "I knew what wampum was. God, what do you think I am, a retard? God."

"So, Vivian ever get her car fixed, Rustoleum?" said Shirley, which showed she was a lot different than Viv.

Vivian would never change the subject to make you feel better.
"Shit, no," said Rusty. "I guess Earl or somebody was
 supposed to come look at it, but he ain't been over yet."

"What's he going to do?" said Shirley, right when the waitress come back with our supper. "Change the earl?"

I laughed while I was trying to take a big drink of ice water. So the ice water, I kind of snorted it up my nose which hurt a little bit but it was funny too. The waitress was watching me and I put my napkin up over my face because the water started to run out my nose. Then directly my eyes got clear and I looked over and Rusty was dark red in the face, white teeth all showing, shelooked like a laughing tomato.

Shirley looked at the waitress, real sad. "I can't take her noplace," she said, nodding her head over towards me. "Snuffs water up her nose, everybody in her family does it."

The waitress said, "You have the Big Chief, hun?" She

took a big bottle of Heinz catsup out of her apron pocket and whumped it on our table and then she was gone.

Shirley was so nice she didn't even seem like a relative. She was a lot smarter than Vivian, too. Like even though Shirley and Vivian both didn't go past 8th grade, you would of thought Shirley finished high school, maybe even college. Well, high school, anyway. Vivian, she got to 8th grade cause the teachers didn't want to hold her back and have her in their class another whole year.

Shirley's accent was real strong. I couldn't understand half of what she said. Rusty acted like I was too dumb to get jokes or something. I wasn't as dumb as some people thought, I just didn't understand country talking. All my family was from Kentucky, which was sort of country, but at least you could understand them.

Shirley had a nice sweet face, but that brown wig didn't do nothing for her. She had dimples and chubby cheeks like a cute little baby and she had real good teeth. She told good stories and she'd laugh in the middle. It's okay to laugh at your own jokes, if it's in the middle. She never had got married but with a good laugh like that, I wondered why.

While we finished our burgers and started on coffee, Shirley told about when her and Vivian was kids. She called Vivian "Vee Vee." The best story was about a big jug of vinegar they had in their kitchen. "We was in the kitchen one time with our brother Doran," said Shirley. "Doran was the oldest one, he was twelve. Vee Vee dared Doran to take a big drink of cider vinegar out of the jug. Doran did it, but he didn't swallow, he just opened up his mouth and let it run back in the jug. But then he did Vee Vee a good one. He acted like he was drinking it again, and then he said, "There, I've took two drinks, now you take one" So Vee Vee had to. And she didn't know enough to spit it out like Doran done." Shirley had a big laughing fit. "And it took her breath, and she went a-running up to where Mommy was in the barn and she fell down, and that knocked her breath loose and then didn't she holler. And she looked foolish to everybody so she wouldn't come back, or feed chickens, or nothing."

After we finished up our coffee, she got hold of the check and wouldn't let me or Rusty even see it. "I got money," I said, and took my ten out, but she wouldn't listen.

"Put your money in your pocket," Shirley said. "I got good money off my tobacco this year."

I had to be glad to keep my money. That ten and a little change on top of my dresser was all I had left. I had got some money off of the army, but I had to pay my plane fare to come home, and the old lady drank up some, and we ate up some, and when I first got back the phone was about to get shut off so I paid some on it. So I was hoping Rusty could get me on at Redskin Brooms, but I didn't want to ask till Shirley was gone. I could get myself a job, don't get me wrong, but still it might look like Rusty had to help me.

I dropped Rusty and Shirley off at Rusty's trailer. I said bye to Shirley, cause she was taking the morning bus back to West Virginia.

"Got to get home," said Shirley. "The chickens miss me."

Rusty said, "Call me later, if you want to do something."

The next morning I called her about ten-thirty. I wouldof called earlier, but I spent half an hour arguing withthe old lady. A waste, a total waste. Her brain was ateup from hanging around in taverns all these years.

About ten o'clock she was tearing around, all over thehouse, saying where was her car keys at, why did I take her keys? They was jingling right there in her damn coat pocket, but she was running her mouth and couldn't hear.

I couldn't take it, so I finally just screamed so loud she had to pay attention. "In your pocket, you dumb-ass! In your pocket, you ate-up dumb-ass!"

 "What did you call your mother?" she said. For a second, she seemed like she was sober. "You can't call your mother names like that. You can't talk to your mother like—"

 "Bullshit, my mother!" I said. "Bullshit. You ain't my mother. I never came out of that messed-up body, I never did! I never did!" I pulled out my crunched-up ten dollar bill and I stuffed it in her coat pocket. "Here!" I run in my room and scraped the change off my dresser top into my hand. About half of it fell on the floor. I run back in the living room and poured a handful of nickels on the dirty carpet, nickels and dimes and pennies. "Here, take it!  Drink it up! Drink it up! Drink till you fall down and die!"

 Then I was calm. I went in the kitchen and got me a cold can of pop out of the Frigidaire. I put my head back around the corner and looked at her. She was just standing there, stupid and dead like she was a wax dummy. “Your keys are in your coat pocket," I told her. I went in my room and shut the door.

I still felt pretty bad when I called Rusty, but I acted pretty normal.

Rusty could tell, though. "Old lady's acting up, huh?" she said. "She is ate up."

"I know," I said. "I told her."

"Go with me, out for a burger or something?" Rusty said.  "Can't—gave her all my goddamned money," I said. "I must be ate up too. Runs in the family."

"It's okay," she said. "You can give it back to me when you get paid."

"That'll be a while, looks like," I said.

"Two weeks from Friday, if you come down to the factory with me tomorrow, they're hiring. If you want."

"You don't got to help me," I said. "I could find something."

 "Help you?" said Rusty. "Shit, help me. They're about to work me to death. I already said I was giving my notice if they didn't get me some help in there. You don't want me to quit my job, do you, and lose my trailer and all?" 

 "Don't get your drawers twisted," I said. "I'll go whenever you say."

"All right then," said Rusty. "I'll take you out for a cheese- burger, for helping me out. Extra onions."

 "That's okay," I said. 'That's what friends are for."