Jane Two (9 page)

And Kevin was right; we only had a stand-up shower. He grinned and flashed me the peace sign, then leaned back to rejoin his horizon. I watched him a moment longer, but there was Jane and Halloween, so I ran, faster than Tommy, across the entire field of diamonds to the edge and down the path into the trees that lined the field, farther and farther away from The Hole, from Kevin's radio and that song.

Still sprinting to get through the section of vacant houses and run-down warehouses, I ran across the second intersection before it turned red on me. Just then I heard a distinctive fuzzy thrumming motor right behind me that had run the yellow, too. My goggles blocked my peripheral vision a bit, but I recognized the warm purr. It was a uniquely comforting sound, so I knew it was not the throaty Firebird or Dad's Gran Torino or Mom's Dodge Dart. A VW Vanagon is its own instrument in the concert of road traffic, maybe akin to a syncopated popping, like John Bonham's hi-hat counting down before he plunged into “Moby Dick.” But any illusion of Zeppelin faded as the orange VW Vanagon pulled up alongside me.

“Want a ride?” Mrs. Bradford was smiling, calling out her driver's side window. “Why are you walking so far from Bentliff Street, Mickey?”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Bradford, they stole my bike.” I guess Mrs. Bradford somehow understood my loss, or maybe she just smiled at my matter-of-factness.

“Yeah, they'll do that, won't they? Well, shame on them. Can I give you a ride?”

“No, thanks, Mrs. Bradford, it's just a coupla blocks more.”

“Nonsense, hop in, I wouldn't want my daughter walking around here alone.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I like your radio. I mean the song on it.”

“Serendipity!” Mrs. Bradford smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing. Hop in.”

I would never insult love by claiming that it can be found with a single sense, but I now had three that were conspiring to convince me that it was here. I walked around to the passenger door, and when I opened it up, “Crimson and Clover” welled and I was engulfed in the familiar sweet spice of Jane. I caught my breath. I saw the suede moccasins first, then my eye slid up to her shorts, her tasseled-front suede vest, and then her headdress wrapped around the most beautiful face I ever hoped to see. Jane stared down at me there, rooted to the sidewalk. Far away I thought I heard Mrs. Bradford introducing the two of us. All I could see was Jane, a glittering and perfect unicorn. Dazzling, dressed for Halloween as an American Indian squaw, Jane's face and arms were painted with cobalt blue stripes and a headband with a single blue feather in the back, exactly like her mother from head to toe.

I know we actually drove home so I must've climbed up into the VW Vanagon, but in Jane's presence I was never able to bring space and time into a manageable volume. I only remember spinning completely out of control. Like an unresponsive fighter plane, my ailerons were out of order, and I expected impact at any moment. Jane would distort everything I knew to be true, even the constant of gravity. She moved differently than others. Around her, my senses seemed to be just a touch out of calibration, delayed, but still crystal clear when it mattered. Her gravity was different somehow, and her inexplicable weightlessness swam around in my head. Seeing her in that proximity put me in a state of grace that would completely shut down my frontal cortex, forcing me to use my primitive brain stem as my sole operating system. Jane was everything I had never seen before. She made me worry that she wasn't secured to the ground, that she might just come unattached and drift away. But I wanted nothing more than for her to be secure. She was the polar opposite of my Grandaddy, whose feet were locked and loaded in The Law.

I know we drove home because that's where Jane left me standing, still rooted and gazing up at her at exactly the same angle, but in my own driveway. I had remained hiding the whole time behind my Speed Racer aviator goggles. But Dad was right—I could still see clearly, though my body was steaming. It was as if all of my atoms had locked down at once, and I was in emergency orbit. All I could do was wave my hand and watch Jane's Vanagon drive away with her smile a spotlit bouquet in a florist shop window as she peered out past the flapping back window curtain.

My only real proof that I had ridden in Jane's presence was that I now held in one hand her cobalt blue feather and in my other, her “Silence.”

“You got Simon and Garfunkel there, son? Been sittin' here for minutes waiting for you to move, Mickey.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“Who was that?” Dad pulled his Gran Torino up to the shattered garage door.

“Oh. My homeroom teacher. They stole my bike.”

“You didn't lock it, did you?” I was humiliated, but after my moment with Jane I didn't even need a Grunt to get through his disappointment.

“What'd I tell you?” And then he stopped. “Well, let's go right now to the police station so you can report it.”

At the police station, I sat shamefaced in the shadow of the hard-nosed sergeant. My Halloween costume sweltered in the overheated office, and my helmet and goggles were starting to itch.

“Shoulda locked it up, Speed Racer. That's what happens when you don't take care of your things. Did you have a lock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, hell, no wonder you lost it if you have a lock and you don't even bother t—”

Dad stopped him.

“You know, sir, if you have the forms, my son will give y'all the necessary information.”

Eyeballing me, the sergeant handed a theft report to Dad. “What kind of bike was it?”

“A Schwinn Sting-Ray with a black banana seat and purple handlebar grips with brand-new eight-track streamers. It was a racin' bike.”

“A racing bike, huh? If only kids nowadays would memorize their serial numbers, my life would be a lot…”

“4TOE776449,” I said.

And with that, I saw the Sergeant's shift in demeanor from irritation to, well, something else. “Okay, can you repeat that again? Slowly, please.” He jotted it down, then led us out back to a small fenced-in area filled with stolen bikes of all kinds.

My hope slipped into despair, and I shoved my fist against my mouth to hide my quivering lip. There was not a complete bike to be found, nor one that even looked remotely worth rebuilding. Dad rummaged through the piles and parts.

“We'll give you a call if we find it, but don't hold your breath, Speed.”

“This works.” Dad lifted a rusted-out frame, with only a rear wheel attached, but it was a Schwinn Sting-Ray. “Sergeant, write this serial number down. If no one claims it in ninety days it's mine, right?”

“Yeah, hell, that mighta been here ninety already. You can probably just take it now if ya want.”

“No, just call me when you find out.”

With all the delays that Halloween, Dad and I sat down at our little white kitchen table just as Mom was carrying away two plates of blackened hot dogs and beans.

“It's cold. I'll make you fresh.” Mom never grumped over stupid stuff.

“We'll eat it, Genie,” Dad instructed her, giving her a kiss on the lips, and patted her backside.

And then my mom protested slightly, “Paul, not in front of Mickey,” as if I hadn't already grown up my whole life seeing my dad do this.

“Seedlin', get out here!”

Out I went. I found my Grandaddy on the porch in his lawn chair, where he always was, watching Magda wiggle sexily up the sidewalk in her skimpy Halloween costume. He pointed at her shaking ass strolling up our driveway toward the front door and asked me, “What you think o' that one, boy?” I saw him gesture at her ass, and I knew exactly what he was referring to.

“You mean Magda?”

“Yep, that one.”

Until that moment I had never thought about Magda, so I hesitated before answering, as I actually found her fucking repellant. “Um, she's pretty, I guess.”

He let out an almost undetectable grumble and slowly shook his head back and forth.

“I want you ta take a good look at that one and 'member what you seein'. That one got the VD right there. You need ta know for when you go out huntin' what ta look for. Hunt that breed an' you gon' starve. All treat and no sustenance. Ain't got what ya need, though ya eyes be tellin ya otherwise. That trash right there. Ain't got nothin' ta offer a man she ain't given away free to ten others 'fore him. Ya don't marry on one sense, ya marry on all of 'em, and they more than five you gon' find. A woman you after come inta this world with a lotsa negotiatin' power. That power called ‘the virtue.' She lose a little bit o' that power every time she let a fella bother her. She ignore all tha' botherin', then she got lots to negotiate with. She do too much botherin', she use it all up and wonder why no man give a goddamn. You find yourself one that done lotsa ignorin', hear me, boy? Hussy don't make no wifin' momma. A momma fer ya babies need ta be able ta offer ya lots o' things that she ain't never offered no man 'fore ya. If all it is's a child, then move along. Birthin' just take care of the nature, but ain't no quality nurturin' possible if she in the ‘Virtue Debt'; you gotta 'member what the VD look like for when you old enough to hunt, it wearin' that same costume…and you sidestep that shit when it come lookin' for my granbabby. A hussy got her place, but the chapel ain't it. Hear me, boy? Now don't tell ya momma I'm learnin' you up early.”

Magda let herself into our house like she always did, and hugged my mom and dad as I followed her inside. She turned around to me and wobbled my Speed Racer helmet, steering my eyes right to her cleavage.

“Hey, punk.” Magda tried to make her voice seductive even when she talked to a kid. And her trashy streetwalker costume didn't help.

Lilyth ran into the kitchen costumed as a risqué Tinker Bell with a winged bikini top.

“I'm going to Magda's.”

“You're not going anywhere dressed like that.” Dad frowned.

Lilyth looked to Mom for support. “Mom, tell him.”

“Tell him what, Lilyth? I told you y'all gotta put clothes on. You too, Magda.”

“I shoulda just snuck out and been Cher!”

“You can go as Cher
now
, as long as she's fully clothed.”

“If she can wear it on TV for the whole world to see, how come I can't wear it two doors down to Magda's?”

“She can wear it on TV because she's not fifteen, Lilyth.”

Lilyth waited for them to change their minds. Mom and Dad ignored her and Magda's pleading look of innocence.

“Fine!” Lilyth stomped off down the hall to her room to change, followed by Magda making apologetic faces at my parents.

Once the girls were out of earshot, Mom leaned in to kiss Dad and whisper, “Don't you let her leave the house like that. I don't want her endin' up like Magda.”

By then, Magda had already had one abortion that got shushed up, but it was a small Texas town, so everybody knew. Too early, Magda and Lilyth had fed off each other to take the maximum amount of risk trying to get what they thought was the maximum amount of reward. To Lilyth's credit, and Magda's, from very early on, they were determined—usually just to randomly get their way without any real goals, but still they were determined. Grandaddy had already taught me that it never worked that way. The thing that bonded them early on was Girl Scouts, which my sister was thrown out of when she got caught in her hiked-up scout skirt with the head of that rotten-toothed scurvy guy from the Texaco station planted underneath. But before that, what bonded Lilyth and Magda happened one day when they were selling Girl Scout cookies. Two men driving a black Gremlin robbed their Girl Scout cookie cash right in front of the Utotem. The men ran to their car with two hundred dollars. Lilyth and Magda ran after the thieves as they climbed into their car. Both girls grabbed the driver by the hair as he drove off with his door not yet fully closed and pulled him completely out of the car as it continued straight into a light pole. I don't know if the driver's face was damaged more by the ground as he fell or the girls beating him after he landed. But his picture in the paper was pretty disturbing. So for Lilyth, sneaking out dressed up like Tinker Bell was nothing.

Lilyth tiptoed back toward the kitchen, out of Mom and Dad's view, as my dad had joined my mom giving candy to trick-or-treaters at the front door. To the back of a frumpy old muumuu sweater, Lilyth had Scotch taped the Tinker Bell wings off her bikini top, and she was stuffing the bikini top in her shorts. She noticed me staring at her and put her finger to her lips with a smile shaped like
I'll kill you if you rat on me
. And I knew she would. She had tried several times before, starting with the time she rolled my favorite red fire truck out into the busy street at our old apartment complex. Of course, I had toddled after it, smack into an oncoming postal truck that landed me in the hospital with my first concussion. If it weren't for Steve McQueen having run interference, I'd be dead.

Magda was whispering, “Hurry up,” and I just stared back at Lilyth, but her Tinker Bell bikini was our secret. We heard Dad saying good-bye to the little goblins out front, so Lilyth and Magda made a run for it out the sliding glass door and down the back way. I watched them go, relieved as my eyes rested on Jane's head rhythmically popping over the fence.

I waited. And there it was.

“One, two, three, four, five, let's go!” The familiar yell wafted through the neighborhood like a soft prayer on a wing.

Jane vanished from my view.

That night I must've gone through the haunted ship four times, but I never saw Jane. They even had a dry ice machine making fog in there that made it a little hard to breathe, but walking through her garage was one of the most magical experiences I ever had. I would have gone through it another ten times if my mind hadn't been completely on Jane.