Original Sins (11 page)

“Doesn't the sun feel good?” Sally sighed.

“Sure does,” Jed agreed, throwing off his shirt. Sally traced his muscles with her finger.

“Goodness but you're a gorgeous man,” she said in a low voice.

He lowered his chest onto hers and kissed her, his tongue moving insistently in her mouth.

She turned her head aside. “Oh Jed, stop that. That's disgusting.”

He ran his hands under her blouse and unfastened her bra. He massaged her breasts and toyed with her nipples, then removed her shirt and rubbed his chest against hers. They wrapped their arms around each other. “Oh, Jed, I love you so much.”

“I love
you,”
he murmured, running one hand slowly up her thigh.

She pushed him off and sat up.

“What's wrong?”

“Jed, you promised.”

“What did I promise?”

“We agreed last night: no hands below the waist.”

“Aw, shit, Sally. What's this ‘I love you so much' crap.”

“It's not crap. And what does that have to do with it anyway?”

“If you really loved me, you'd want me as much as I want you.”

“If
you
really loved
me
, you wouldn't want me to do things I don't want to do.”

“You do want it, but you don't know that you want it.”

“And I need you to show me?”

“Right.”

She threw on her bra and shirt, jumped up and stomped toward the car. “Take me home.”

“All right, I will! And for the last time, too!” “Good!”

“Who're you saving it for, Sally? The worms?” “You're
disgusting.”

On the trip home she had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying. She knew what Jed wanted. She knew what her daddy wanted. She knew what the Lord wanted. What she herself wanted was to do what they wanted. But they all wanted different things.

“I hope you have a good life,” he growled as she got out. Women! Jesus Christ almighty! Coach Clancy was right: You only needed them for two things, and one was to get your meals on the table.

He bought a case of beer and picked up Bobby and Hank at the basketball court. On the way to the lake, Hank reached into the glove compartment for a church key and pulled out an unopened box of condoms. “Not going so great, huh, Jed?”

“Shut up.”

They rode in Bobby's family's motorboat to a ski jump and climbed out on the sloping canvas surface. Hank turned on Jed's radio. They lay on the jump drinking and smoking, throwing empty cans and butts into the water. The D.J. said, “And now we have a special request for the Dixie Cups singing ‘Chapel of Love.' We're sending it out this afternoon to Sally. Sally, Jed says he loves you, gal, and thank you . . . just for being you …”

Jed grabbed the radio and hurled it into the lake.

“Who needs em, huh?” Bobby muttered.

“You ain't kidding.”

After taking them home, Jed went to a phone booth. “Hey, Betty. It's me, Jed. You want to tip a few tonight?”

“Well, well. Isn't Blondie putting out for our Jeddy?”

“Never mind. Forget I asked.”

“Just teasing,” she said. “Sure. I'd like to go drinking with you. Pick me up in half an hour.”

He went to a drive-in and ate a pork barbecue and drank a milk shake, which sobered him up enough to realize he should be going home to bed. Instead he drove across the bridge from the paper mill to Cherokee Shoals, then wove through the network of dirt roads which were lined with sagging cottages with cluttered yards. He stopped and hopped out, dodging a bunch of planters that Betty had once made by cutting up and painting old tires to make them look like open flower blossoms. Her father had tried without success to sell them at his shack on the highway. As Jed entered the messy house, he saw Injun Al himself, sprawled on the sofa in his buckskins. His war bonnet lay on a table, and a jar of clear liquid stood on the floor beside his outflung hand. He was snoring loudly. Betty came out in white pedal pushers, black flats, and a tight black pullover sweater. Her hair was teased into a beehive, and she wore bright red lipstick and mascara.

“Hey, Betty. Looking good,” Jed said.

“Thanks, doll. You look pretty terrible yourself.”

“I was out at the lake drinking beer all afternoon.”

“You sure you want to keep going?”

“Yeah.”

They roared across the bridge, up the hill, down Sally's street, and down a dirt road through the field behind her house. The Chevy pitched and bobbed, and Betty held on to the dashboard. The full moon coming up over the North Carolina mountains bathed the pasture in an orange glow. The Chevy hurtled to a stop in the woods. Jed jumped out and grabbed some beers, a flashlight, and blanket. Betty followed him as he crouched down and duckwalked into the powder magazine.

Inside the hollow chamber, he spread the blanket and attached the flashlight to the wall like a sconce. He threw himself down, opened two beers, and handed one to Betty.

They drank and he complained about Sally, while Betty patted him, sympathizing. “Why do you bother?”

“Oh, I don't know. She's so pretty and all like that. Her daddy running the mill. I guess it makes me feel important or something. You know what I mean?”

“That's the truest thing you ever said,” she remarked.

Eventually he rolled over and buried his head in her lap.

“Hey, I thought we was just drinking beer tonight.”

“When have we ever just drunk beer?”

“There's a first time for everything.”

“You mean you're not gonna screw me?”

“Oh, all right. Why the hell not?”

“That's the spirit,” he said, unzipping her pedal pushers.

He was finished in a matter of seconds, whimpering and burying his face in her neck as he came. He pulled away, sat up, guzzled half a beer, and lit a cigarette, all of a sudden in a terrible mood. She had seen him weak, needing her.

“Maybe someday, if we keep this up,” she murmured, “you'll even learn how to screw.”

“You don't like how I do it?”

“What's there to like? Or to dislike?”

“What do you mean?” He was always the first to come during the circle jerks in junior high. He had the biggest dick in the whole school. What did she want anyhow—a telephone pole?

“You're too fast. A girl likes it slow, with a lot of hugging and kissing.”

“Shit, I been hugging and kissing all week.”

“But not with me, darlin. Come on now. I ain't through with you yet.” She began stroking him.

“I'm too tired.” Actually he was terrified of how much she enjoyed screwing. She couldn't seem to get enough. She acted like a man that way, and he didn't like it. She mounted him and moved up and down on him. He looked down his chest to where her tits swung back and forth over him and was flooded with contempt. Her need was so great. It disgusted him. Sally, whatever their difficulties, was a lady. She would never behave like this. Let's face it: Betty Boobs was a whore.

Afterward she murmured, “You're such a bastard, Jed.”

“I ain't no bastard,” he said with his lazy grin. “I can be real sweet”

“You
can
be, but you ain't never.”

He lunged for her left nipple with his teeth, snapping them shut a fraction of an inch away. “See? I coulda bit your tit off and I didn't. Ain't that sweet?”

“If that's sweet, honey, then we're all in bad trouble.” She cradled his handsome head in her arms as though he were a big baby and tousled his light brown flat-top until he fell asleep.

Chapter Three
The Minstrel Show

The gym was packed for the Civic Club's annual minstrel show. Many of the prominent business and professional men in town sat in chairs in tiered rows on a stage. They wore orange satin tuxedos with exaggerated lapels, battered top hats, and white gloves. Their faces were blackened, and they held tambourines.

Dr. Pridemore, the town orthodontist, was doing a soft shoe routine to the tune “When Nighttime Comes to Ole Nigger Town.” A banker and an insurance salesman were behind him, ineptly parodying. Every time he turned around, they'd be resting on their canes, looking off into the distance and whistling through thickened red lips. The audience was screaming with laughter.

Emily was sitting in the bleachers beside her friend June. Raymond crouched below the stage snapping pictures. Jed and Sally sat a couple of rows below Emily. Jed was trying to slide his hand up Sally's thigh. Sally slapped the hand and said something petulant. Neither took their eyes from the stage. Mr. and Mrs. Prince, Mr. Prince Sr., with his bushy white hair and eyebrows, and Mrs. Tatro Sr. sat in folding chairs on the gym floor. Raymond and Jed's mother, on the far side of the room, was tugging at her skirt trying to cover her slip. Her husband, his long legs crossed at the knees and his chin resting on his fist, was chuckling.

A minstrel named Rastus, who owned a lumber yard in real life, was asking the interlocutor, whose face wasn't blackened, if he'd heard about his cousin LeRoy.

“No, I don't believe I have, Rastus,” said the interlocutor. “Tell me about your cousin LeRoy.”

“Law, Cap'n, dat man de dumbest thing you ever did see!”

“You say your cousin LeRoy is dumb, Rastus? That's a pretty serious accusation. Why do you say your cousin LeRoy is dumb?”

“Boss, dat man so dumb he went and robbed him a clothing store.”

The interlocutor looked blank. “Well, I don't know that robbing a store is a very good idea, Rastus, but I still don't see why that makes your cousin LeRoy the dumbest thing that ever lived.”

“My cousin LeRoy, he so dumb, Cap'n, dat when he rob dis clothing store, he put on de new clothes and leave his old ones in de store!”

The audience howled, and the minstrels high-stepped around the stage, shaking tambourines and wiping tears or laughter from their blackened faces.

Mr. Prince Jr. was feeling guilty for not being up on that stage. The Civic Club used to invite him to join every few years. Sometimes he'd try by attending their luncheons in the club room at the Howard Johnson Motel while they planned the Junior Miss Pageant, or this minstrel show. But for some reason, he felt awkward, and so did they. The other men were self-conscious in his presence, and meetings never got off the ground. It seemed as though the biggest help he could give them was to stay away. Even though he'd lived in Newland his whole life, he couldn't do the accent required for this show. And apart from earning money for the Civic Club, he didn't actually understand the appeal of ridiculing Negroes. He'd been raised by Negro women, his mother, a Newland native, being at club meetings a lot. His parents had always treated those women kindly. It upset him to see them made fun of. But he'd learned as a boy to keep such upset to himself, because people around you didn't necessarily share it. And if you wanted to get along with them, you couldn't be accusatory and self-righteous. You were responsible only for your own attitudes and behavior, not for those of your neighbors as well. So you performed a variety of moral self-violation. Which explained how he was able to sit through this minstrel show every year, smiling at the right places. A few weeks before, at church, a young man from Baltimore who was trying out for old Mr. Shell's job had delivered a sermon in which he urged the executives in the congregation to hire more Negroes and to exert their influence to integrate the schools. Several men stomped out, but Robert Prince stayed seated and was secretly delighted. Times were changing. A new order was coming. His only regret was that he himself was part of the debris that would have to be swept away to make room for it.

Even in high school Robert had felt a gap between himself and his peers. He was the son of a Yankee, the son of their fathers' boss. They were mostly sons of dirt farmers and coal miners down from the hills. They talked different and carried themselves different from Robert, who was a town-born North-South hybrid. They were silent, proud, elaborately polite, and treated him with respectful banter. But among themselves they drank and fought and courted. He longed to participate, but didn't know how to make it happen—and the initiative in relations with them was always up to him. He'd been a loner, had hung around with the few other offspring of professional and managerial families who hadn't been sent North to boarding schools. And toward the end of high school he began dating Melanie Tatro, now Mrs. Prince. Her father was a vice president at the mill under Robert's own father, and they'd known each other forever. It was a match so obvious that, after it happened, everyone wondered why it hadn't happened sooner.

He had gone off to Princeton, where he first came in contact with novels about the British in India and Africa and began to get some perspective on why he felt so out of place in Newland, why his parents' friends looked to the North for standards of sophistication and civilization. He also discovered that to the golden Yankee youth at Princeton he was just another dumb hillbilly, something he'd yearned to be back home. He studied hybridization in biology class and understood that he was doomed to this stance of never quite fitting in with members of either parent species. He might as well stop trying because it just wasn't going to happen.

The following year Melanie went to Randolph-Macon. They traveled to each other's schools for dances and party weekends, and were married in Newland in a big ceremony at the Episcopal church right after her graduation. He'd begun at the mill the previous year and was being groomed to take over when his father decided to retire, which everyone was convinced would be never. It was like being the Prince of Wales to his father's Queen Victoria.

He glanced at his father, who sat next to him with liver spots all over his hands and face. What had confounded Robert's Princeton theorizing was the knowledge that his father, who was from Philadelphia, was able to carry it all off. He'd never been a minstrel up on that stage, but he used to roll up his shirt-sleeves and stroll through the mill all the time, chatting with the workers. He knew most on a first-name basis, as well as their spouses and children, from many years of company barbecues. He could inquire about their latest surgery, their new houses, their softball league. In many cases, their fathers and mothers had also worked at the mill; their cousins and aunts and uncles worked there; their children would eventually work there. They would sometimes ask him, as a favor, to take on a brother or a daughter, and he would do his best. Ever since he'd been able to walk, Robert had been taken on these journeys through the mill by his father, as training.