Once Beyond a Time (2 page)

“Hey, y’all!” Donna calls.

Yes, we are in the South. Best get used to it, I suppose. I step off the porch and greet Donna with a hug.

“Welcome, Sis,” Steve says. He kisses my cheek and shakes hands with Sheldon, who has just stepped out the front door. Steve settles his hand on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. If he weren’t my older brother—and a man at that—I’d almost think he understood.

Friday, July 12, 1968

O
H GREAT
. I
’VE
died and gone to hell. Dad—oh yeah, that great man of God—turns out to be a hypocrite, and now all of us have to pay with our lives. The old man can’t keep his hands off Mom’s pretty, young cousin, and next thing I know, I’ve got to do my senior year down here in Barney Fife country, where the best-looking guy in class is probably as ugly as sin after ten generations of family inbreeding. I mean, if they’re all like those two bozos Uncle Steve sent up here this morning to help us unload the U-Haul, I’m as good as in a nunnery. One guy had brown teeth, and the other had an Adam’s apple the size of Texas.

My senior year! I was just starting to make some headway with Brian, too. I mean, at least he’d talk to me when he was high, and that’s something anyway. Another few weeks, maybe a month, I bet we’d have hooked up. I’d finally shed that preacher’s daughter stereotype stuff and was hanging out with the right people, the cool kids, and I bet I had a pretty good chance at homecoming queen this year and what happens but Dad announces we’re pulling up stakes and heading to hillbilly country. He wouldn’t say why we were moving, but later Mom told me the whole creepy story about him shacking up with Charlene. Yeah, Dad was pretty miffed about Mom spilling the beans and all, but hey, when it comes to
being mad, I’d say Dad doesn’t have a leg to stand on. What he did to Mom is way worse than her telling me what he did.

I begged Mom to let me stay in Abington and live with Monica for our senior year. Monica’s parents even said it was all right, but Mom wouldn’t give in. She’s already lost Carl to the war, she says, and she’s not going to give up another child right at the same time. Like we have this close mother-daughter thing going on or something. And anyway, Carl’s just a company clerk, for crying out loud. Like, what, he’s going to die of too much typing? Bleed to death from too many paper cuts? It’s not like he’s out on the front lines where the killing’s going on. Plus, he wanted to go, the psycho. He’s seventeen when he graduates, and then he goes and works at that two-bit Woolworth’s job until his eighteenth birthday so he can sign up for the war soon as he’s old enough. I mean, there’s guys out there burning their draft cards and running off to Canada, and my brother the weirdo wants to go to Vietnam like he’s signing up for some sort of cruise ship vacation or something. Anyway, Mom’s wasting her time worrying about him. He’s probably having the time of his life, smoking all the weed he wants and meeting pretty little Vietnamese girls in the back streets of Hanoi. That’s more than I can say for myself, down here in Hicksville. Oh man, my life is ruined.

So this dump is supposed to be my bedroom? At least we’re not in some church manse for the first time in my life, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about this house. This place is so old it looks like it’s falling apart around our ears, and the furniture hasn’t been changed since the last century. It’s been sitting here, moldering, for decades. I mean, I wonder how many old geezers have slept in this very bed. I don’t know, but I think I can still smell their sour sweaty flesh like they just got up and didn’t bother to change the sheets. And look at that old chair—it’s got doilies on the arms! And the dresser—sheesh—the mirror’s so bad, I can hardly find a spot in it that shows my whole face at once. That might be fine for some old lady who doesn’t want to see herself anyway, but it’s
not going to work for me. I mean, putting up with the furniture in all those manses was no picnic, but this takes the cake. I got to get my boxes unpacked and get my Grateful Dead posters up on the wall. Maybe that’ll help. But I doubt it.

There’s a door here in my room, leading out to the upper porch. We got a porch downstairs and a porch upstairs. “Well, isn’t that nice,” Dad says this morning when we pull up in front of this oversized shack that’s supposed to be our new home. Yeah, so, whoop-de-do. We can all sit out here in our rocking chairs like the bunch of hillbillies we are now and smoke our corncob pipes and drink moonshine from a jug. Like two porches make up for an entire senior year. It’d be all right if I could step out here at night and hear Brian calling to me from down behind a tree, and then I’d sneak off … but, no, forget it! Brian’s a thousand miles away, along with all my friends and every other good thing that used to be my life.

Good grief, look at Digger, will you? Down there playing in the dirt. That’s all he ever does. He’s like Pig Pen in that Charlie Brown comic strip, the guy with the dust cloud following him around. Dirt up to his elbows, on the back of his neck, down his pants. If he’s dirty, he’s happy. That’s my kid brother. How embarrassing.

“Hey, Digger,” I yell down to him. “Why don’t you go play in a riptide somewhere.”

Digger stands and looks around. Then he looks up at me. His face is all scrunched up because he’s squinting against the sun. “I didn’t know there was any ocean around here,” he says.

Stupid kid.

He goes back to playing in the dirt. Mom is on the porch below me. I know she is. I can hear her footsteps. I hear her sigh. She is big-time mad at Dad, and I don’t blame her. “Why don’t you just divorce him, Mom?” I asked. I mean, anyone else would. But Mom? She doesn’t even answer. She just looks at me like I’ve told her to go jump off a cliff. I guess she thinks
she has to play the devoted wife, like this is The Donna Reed Show or something. Of course, if this were The Donna Reed Show, Dad wouldn’t have been sleeping around.

Oh great. Look who’s here. It’s the Clampetts. Jed, Granny, Jethro, and Elly May. Okay, so Aunt Donna doesn’t look anything like Granny, but she waves her hand and yells, “Hey, y’all”and I know I’m not in Pennsylvania anymore.

Well, I for one am not in the mood for company. I slip back into my room and plop down on the old stuffed chair with the doilies on the arms. It smells musty, and it’s all lumpy like it’s stuffed with a sack of potatoes. I let my head drop against the back and shut my eyes. Oh God, if you’re up there, just kill me now.

I open my eyes, and there’s cousin Jeff, standing in the doorway of my bedroom. I haven’t seen him in a couple years, and he’s grown about a foot and sprouted a boatload of pimples since we were last together. He smiles and shrugs like I asked him a question or something. “Hey,” he says.

“Is that how you say hi around here?”

He shrugs again. “I guess so.”

He’s not a bad-looking kid, except for the acne, but he’s two years younger than me, and he’s still a year away from getting his driver’s license, and he’d better not get any ideas that we’re going to be friends or anything. I’m in a place where there’s not going to be any friends. But just one year, I tell myself. Just one year and I’m outta here.

“So what do you do for fun around here?” I ask, not bothering to get up from the chair.

For a minute, he just stands there looking stupid, like he has no idea what fun is. I was afraid of that. “Well,” he finally says, “lots of stuff.”

“What? Like, go to hoedowns and have coon-dog howling contests? Shoot varmints to make stew? Attend public hangings?”

He looks confused, the poor dweeb. Then he laughs a little. Like he’s not sure he should, but he’s afraid not to. Then he says, “Well, I don’t
think we do that anymore.”

“Do what?” I ask, egging him on.

“Hang people. Anyhow, I haven’t heard of any hangings around here lately.”

“That’s too bad,” I say.

His eyebrows try hard to meet his hairline. “You do that in Pennsylvania? Hang people?”

“Only during leap years.”

He doesn’t know whether to believe me or not. He fidgets and sticks his hands in the pockets of his overalls.

“So,” I go on. “Back to good times in Black Mountain. You folks smoke weed?”

He finally looks alive. “Oh sure!” he cries. “Yeah, we do that.”

My head springs up. Maybe we’re getting somewhere. “Really?” I ask.

“Sure! Corn silk. Grapevines. Rabbit tobacco.”

I feel my eyes turning into slits. Jeff looks scared.

“I mean,” I say through clenched teeth, “marijuana. You got any marijuana down here?”

His eyes widen even as mine grow narrower. “You mean, that illegal drug they do out in California?”

I don’t bother to answer. Far as I’m concerned, this conversation’s over.

How am I going to make it through this year? I want to kill myself. No, better yet, I want to kill somebody else. And I can hear him downstairs right now, talking to Uncle Steve about the Chevy dealership. So let’s welcome Sheldon Crane, Birchfield Chevrolet’s newest used car salesman.

Dad, the big liar, should fit his new role just fine.

Friday, July 12, 1968

F
ATHER, FORGIVE ME
, for I have sinned.

Father.

Forgive me.

For I have sinned.

No matter how many times I say it, I know I have to say it one more time, because the forgiveness is always just beyond my reach.

Meg, I know, has not forgiven me. Can I blame her? If the tables were turned, would I forgive her? I’d like to think I would. I’d like to think she
will
—someday. That’s my prayer, anyway.

Linda is as angry with me as her mother is. Won’t talk to me, barely looks at me. Is it because she’s seventeen? Would she have hated me anyway, just because she’s seventeen, and I’m a pastor? Was a pastor. Was. Past tense now.

Carl writes to me from Vietnam, telling me to forget it. “These things happen,” he says. “Just forget it and move on.” It is hard to move on when the one you’re supposed to be traveling with refuses to budge.

The Birchfields came this afternoon, bringing greetings and food. Casseroles, canned goods, fresh fruits and vegetables, cookies, and other baked goods—all pulled out of the back of their Chevy like it was some
sort of welcome wagon. They’ve been good to us. Heaven knows, Steve was good to me, offering me the job. Not that it’s the kind of job I ever imagined myself doing.

“You look worried,” he said to me after supper.

“I really have no idea how to sell cars.”

“Nothing to it!” he said cheerfully. “I can tell you in an afternoon everything you need to know.”

His smile was full of confidence. He is a man who doesn’t worry. “Listen,” he said, nodding toward the porch, away from the women who were cleaning up the kitchen. Steve and I stepped outside. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one, throwing the match into the grass at the foot of the steps. “Listen,” he said again. “I know things are … tense … right now, between you and Meg. But she’ll come around.”

I found myself sighing heavily.

“I mean,” he went on, “you’re not the first guy to ever—well, you know. Women get over it.”

I looked at him for a long while. I’ve seen Steve only a few times in my life, whenever he and Donna came up to Philly to visit. We never came down here, never could afford a real vacation on my pastor’s salary. So I don’t know Steve well, but he’s my brother-in-law, my wife’s brother, and he’s already extended his hand to me. He’s bailed me out. I need his friendship, and so far he’s been friendly.

It felt awkward, but I went ahead and asked, “Were you ever unfaithful, Steve?”

“Me?” He tapped his chest with the hand holding the cigarette. “Yeah. Once.” He shrugged, like he was telling me he’d once gone fishing.

“Donna know?”

“Sure. Yeah, she knows everything. It was a few years ago.”

“So what happened?”

“I was in the doghouse a couple of months, you’d better believe it. I
mean, she wouldn’t cook for me, do my laundry, nothing. And as far as …” He paused, looked at me, took a long pull on his cigarette. “Well, let’s just say, I got pretty well acquainted with the guest room before I ever laid my head down on my own pillow again.”

He said it like he shouldn’t be talking about such things with a pastor, because everyone knows pastors are different. Not quite human. No, more than human. Holy, somehow. Incapable of
being
human. Incapable of sin.

I am a used car salesman.

But for the moment, Steve seems to forget that. To him, I am still a pastor. He must be careful.

“So what happened?” I asked again.

“Well,” he said with a smile, “you know, after a while it gets old for both of you. If you just go on working and bringing home the bacon—and a few roses don’t hurt either—you eventually fall back into the old routine. You don’t even have to say anything, you know. She just starts making your dinner again and washing your socks. And then someday it’s almost like it never happened.”

Like it never happened? For me, it will never be like that. In this house, there are four bedrooms. One for Linda, one for Digger, one for Meg, one for me.

I am no longer married. What I wouldn’t give to be married again. Not just to anyone, but to Meg, my wife.