When the Nines Roll Over (14 page)

“There is no Wales,” she said, her voice surprisingly husky. She was older than I had first thought, around my age, with a freckled complexion, brown eyes, and dirty blond hair that looked as if it had been hacked at with a machete. She stared at my hands resting on the steering wheel and said, “What do you play, O-line?”

The Pennsylvania kids I knew from football camp were bred tough. As a rule, they weren't as athletic as the kids from California or Florida, they weren't as well coached as the kids from Texas, but when they played they treated their bodies like rental cars. One time, when a bunch of us were sitting around the lake after dinner, a Stroudsburg boy asked me if I wanted to play stone with them. Sure, I said. How do you play? All the Pennsylvania kids jumped up and pelted me with pebbles. I chased after them but they were wide receivers and safeties and they laughed and catcalled as I lumbered in hopeless pursuit.

“O-line,” I told the barefoot girl. “What happened to Wales?”

“Nothing happened to it,” she said. “There never was one.”

That seemed strange to me, a town called North Wales with no Wales below it, but I was deep in the boondocks and I didn't want to start debating with the natives.

“Is there somewhere around here to get a burger?”

She grinned at me. Her front teeth were chipped. “We're still in America, big man. We've got Burger King and everything.”

“Which way is that?”

“Onion rings sound good,” she said. “Give me a ride and I'll direct.”

She wheeled her bicycle off the shoulder and dumped it into the green stalks, the growing things. I should have asked her what they were, but I wasn't thinking about crops. I was watching her frayed denim shorts; her sunburned arms, legs, and nose; her white throat. My navigator.

She got in and pointed. “Straight on.”

I stalled the car and the girl said, “Put that huge foot of yours on the clutch.”

“I know,” I said, remembering the good times when it was just me and the machine zooming along in peace. I finally got the car moving again. “I'm Leon,” I told her.

“I'm Maureen. Most people call me Reen.”

“Reen? What do the other people call you?”

She frowned. “Maureen.”

I turned up the volume and Maureen sang along, kicking her dirty bare feet up on the dashboard. She twitched her toes to the beat. Her nails were painted silver. “Whose car?” she asked.

“My dad's.”

“I thought maybe you stole it. I thought we could be outlaws.” She made two pistols with her hands and fired away through the windshield. “Bonnie and Clyde.”

“My dad doesn't know I took it,” I said, wishing I'd told her the truth. I really was an outlaw but I wasn't getting any credit.

“My mom doesn't know I cut school.” She flicked the hem of the Virgin Mary's robe and watched the statuette dance back and forth. “I'm Catholic, too.”

So I fell in love right then, Mick Jones wailing over the speakers, the Virgin Mary swaying, Maureen's dirty feet on the dashboard. It wasn't her looks, though I thought she was lovely. It was her fearlessness. She was absolutely unafraid of me. The girls at Mahlus High tended to treat me like Lenny from
Of Mice and Men
; they thought if I got too excited I might pet them real hard and snap their necks. But Maureen was at ease sitting next to me. We glided through the farmland and I forgot about my hunger; I forgot about Tommy Byrnes Jr. and his father, who must be calling the police by now; I forgot about the biology test and the Golgi apparati. There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook. I was sixteen years old and already second-team All-New Jersey at left tackle; I was driving a midnight blue Cadillac Eldorado to California; my navigator knew the lyrics to The Clash songs and painted her toenails silver. I was winning.

At the Burger King drive-thru we bought Whoppers and fries and onion rings and milkshakes, one vanilla, one strawberry. The girl at the window was pretty in a mean way, with skinny lips and dark-blue eye shadow. She glared at me when I offered the credit card and shook her head.

“Cash only. No school today, Reen?”

“No school this year, Lannie?”

“This your new boyfriend? Where'd you get the car, boyfriend?”

I had opened the glove compartment and was searching for stray coins or bills. Maureen's legs, bare below the white threads of frayed denim, smelled of soap and sweat and grass. One knee was skinned and starting to scab over. I looked up into her face and she looked back, arching one eyebrow expertly.

“What's the story, Reen, you got a new boyfriend for every day of the week?”

Maureen ran a hand back and forth over my flattop and smiled at the girl. “You put too much face on your makeup, Lannie.”

Lannie's skinny lips curled back from her teeth as she leaned through the window. “You've got a real slut in your car, rich boy. I guess she already sucked up all your cash.”

Maureen pulled a ten-dollar bill from her pocket and handed it to me. I sat up in my seat, gave Lannie the money, and took back the change and the paper bags of food. “Thank you for choosing Burger King,” she told me, sliding the window shut.

We continued west, chewing on our burgers meditatively. When it became clear that Maureen wasn't going to explain anything, I said, “You and Lannie like the same guy or something?”

“She's my cousin. She's not so bad. This place drives you crazy after a while.” She sighed and twirled an onion ring around her index finger.

“I'm heading to California,” I told her. “You can come, if you want.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Why not?”

“I'll buy dinner on my credit card.”

After we finished eating Maureen burped delicately into the back of her hand and said, “Now we need dessert. You like chocolate?”

During wrestling season I competed as a heavyweight, which meant that for matches and tournaments I needed to weigh in at less than 275 pounds. That fall I'd gotten close to 300, and when winter came I was dieting for the first time in my life, jogging around the school's steamy indoor pool in a rubber suit, and spitting into a cup during class, which my teammates assured me was good for at least six ounces a day. One of the things I gave up that winter was chocolate, and some nights I dreamed that I swam through a lake of melted chocolate, breathing chocolate, swallowing peanut-butter fishes when I could catch them.

“I like chocolate,” I told her.

“Take a left at the stoplight,” she said.

“Ooh,
stoplight
.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes we just sit here and watch it change colors.
Left
, Leon. Your other left.”

We picked up Route 422 and sped along, the needle pointing directly at fifty-five. I ended up telling her the truth about the car and she thought I ought to call Tommy Byrnes Jr. and tell him everything was okay, but that I shouldn't call him until we got our chocolate, and that would take a while. I told her about my family: my baby brother Ollie who was two years old; my father who had made a fortune selling life insurance on the Jersey Shore; my mother who taught at the school for the deaf in Elizabeth, an hour commute each way, and how much those kids loved her, and how kind they were, and how strange it was that deaf kids were so much nicer than kids with ears that worked.

Maureen told me that her parents got married in Las Vegas and they were divorced six months after she was born. Her father still lived in Vegas; he was one of the highest-paid blackjack dealers in town; he drove a Porsche with a license plate that read 214ME. Maureen was going to move there after high school and he would teach her the tricks of the trade. She could already shuffle like a pro. Her mother had made a big mistake by remarrying and losing her alimony—the stepdad was a creep and hadn't held a real job in three years. Maureen had a little sister named Emily who was four and would be perfect for Ollie.

Each time the Clash tape ended I would flip it to the other side. We never got sick of it. I was getting hungry again, but I didn't want Maureen to think my stomach ruled me, so I didn't say anything for eight minutes. When my patience finally ran out I asked, “So where is this chocolate store?”

She smiled and punched my arm. “We're getting there. Relax, big man. This is the good part.”

The girl was right. If the car had been stocked with sausages I could have driven with her to the southern tip of Chile, listening to
London Calling
the whole way, phoning Tommy Byrnes Jr. from Cape Horn to apologize. “But Jesus Christ, Tommy, have you ever seen the Southern Cross?”

“Anyway,” I said to Maureen, “they better not run out of chocolate before we get there.”

“No,” she said. “I don't think they will.”

We left the farms behind and the road cut across a series of wooded hills. I was now able to shift gears with almost no grinding noises whatsoever, and I began showing off for Maureen, fading into the turns, downshifting on the steep slopes, waving to the truckers who zipped by in the opposite direction.

After we came around a sharp curve I began to smell something different in the air, a wonderful smell, familiar and strange at the same time. It was a smell that reminded me of before I was big, when I stood in the kitchen with my thumb in my mouth and watched mom open the oven and peer inside.

“Chocolate,” I said. The hills smelled like solid chocolate.

“Chocolate,” agreed Maureen. She laughed diabolically—
mwa-ha-ha! mwa-ha-ha!
—her head tilted back, exposing that wondrous white throat, laughing the laugh of a jinni who has just tricked a man out of his final wish. We passed under an arched sign: HERSHEY PARK—THE SWEETEST PLACE ON EARTH.

We parked the Eldorado in a giant lot that was nearly empty.

“This place is packed in the summer,” she said. I thought it would be a good idea to put the top up, but neither of us could figure out how it worked. “It'll be safe,” she said. “It's the sweetest place on earth.”

We walked down Cocoa Avenue. The tops of the street-lights were shaped like Hershey's Kisses. Everything smelled like chocolate. We strolled through Hershey Gardens, where the tulips were blooming, and stopped for a snack at the Hotel Hershey. The doorman shook his head and told us, “No shoes, no service.” He said it as if he were the first person to think of the line. I went in alone and bought three tuna-melt sandwiches, six hard-boiled eggs, two hot dogs, a one-pound chocolate bar, and two Styrofoam cups of milk, carried the food outside in a plastic bag bearing the Hershey's logo. Maureen and I sat down to eat on the hotel's patio but the doorman left his post to tell us that the patio was for guests only. The anger started pouring through me and it felt good; it felt pure. I stood and stared down into his blunt, sullen face, ready to squeeze his skull until snot popped out his nostrils, but Maureen grabbed my hand and led me to a bench near the Gardens, and we finally ate in peace. Or I ate and Maureen watched. She didn't seem disturbed by the quantities I consumed. She seemed to think it was normal.

After lunch we went to the amusement park and rode on a roller coaster, a Ferris wheel, and a carousel. We gave each other whiplash in the bumper cars and then Maureen said, “I ought to get home pretty soon. My sister gets scared when she's alone with mom too long.”

The drive back east seemed faster. Maureen took a nap, her head resting on my shoulder. She talked in her sleep, excitedly, but the only words I could make out were,
No fair.
I turned the radio's volume down and when I looked at the road again I saw that we were about to slam into a refrigerator lying on its back. I swerved into the opposite lane and missed it by inches. One lone car followed me a ways back; I flashed my hazards as a warning for him. After my follower slowed and switched lanes, he blinked his headlights to thank me, and Maureen slept on. I felt beloved and loving, at peace with my fellows, a good man making his way through the world.

When we got back to North Wales I woke Maureen and she directed me to the spot where she had dumped her bicycle. She got out of the car and stepped lightly through the clover and long grass that grew between the pavement and the farm field. She found her bike lying in the green crops, lifted it upright, and walked it over to the driver's side door. I thought I should get out of the car to say good-bye but Maureen didn't let me; she bent down and kissed me on the mouth. A truck rumbled by, blowing its horn.

It was the first good kiss of my life. Her lips tasted like chocolate. When it was over she reached into her hip pocket and handed me a folded candy-bar wrapper. On the inside she had written her name and telephone number. She had drawn a pig's face, and from the pig's mouth a dialogue bubble with the words
Don't forget about me!

“I won't,” I said, and I wanted to say more but I was sixteen and dumb, and Maureen got onto her bicycle and pedaled away.

I drove back to New Jersey with the tape deck silent. I didn't want to listen to Joe and Mick if Maureen wasn't accompanying them on backing vocals. The whole ride to Mahlus was miserable. I wanted it to rain, I wanted the weather to match my mood, but the sun kept shining and I thought, some day, California.

When I got to the high school parking lot I expected to see cops waiting for me, but there was nothing but the usual beat-down faculty cars and snazzy senior cars. That was one problem with Mahlus High. The students didn't respect the teachers because the teachers were poor, and the teachers didn't respect the students because the students were rich.