Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

Reading was a love they had in common, though Patsy Ann preferred the classics — Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens among her favorites — while Michael’s tastes were terribly plebeian, running to pulp magazines and comic books. He had a large collection of Big Little Books, tiny square, fat books about comic strip characters and movie cowboys.

Back in high school, she had once teased him for buying a stack of the things at Woolworth’s — Tarzan, the Lone Ranger, the Phantom, Dick Tracy.

“Aren’t you a little old for Tom Mix?” she’d asked.

They were sitting at the counter sipping nickel Cokes after school, and he was paying no attention to her, flipping through the pulp pages between the garish covers.

Still paging through, he said, “My brother and I used to read these.”

“What brother?”

His eyes tensed; his voice took on an evasive quality. “I had a brother before we moved here.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died.”

“Oh, I... I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” His eyes thawed; his smile was warm, too. “It’s not your fault I’m a case of arrested development.”

You never knew what was important to a person — Michael had taught her that. He never again mentioned this mysterious brother, and yet she always remembered the controlled passion in Mike’s voice as he’d spoken about this lost child.

Funny thing — most everyone thought Mike was quiet, even stoic. That was part of what had attracted her in the first place — the mysterious brooding reserve that seemed to mask a reservoir of secrets, of experiences he chose not to share.

But they did talk, Patsy Ann and Mike. In the right mood, he would tell her what he thought — about teachers, about fellow students, about politics and even world affairs. Sometimes they talked about a future together... particularly in the afterglow of backseat lovemaking. (Prom night had been the first time.)

Much as she liked to escape to other ages and places through literature, Patsy Ann savored the notion of a simple life here in the Middle West with Michael, where they could both work and, when the time came, raise a family. Neither of them had adventurous yearnings or high-flown ambitions — just the hope of being part of a loving family in secure surroundings.

And in a small town like DeKalb, that hope was realized, every day. For one thing, the kind of prejudices you ran into in a big city like Chicago just weren’t present; even the three colored families in town were treated fine. That Michael was Italian didn’t seem to bother anybody — or anyway hadn’t since that time in seventh grade when the school bully called Mike a wop and Mike cleaned his clock.

Come to think of it, that was the day Patsy Ann knew she loved Michael Satariano, although they didn’t start going together till high school, sophomore year. Mike was a star short stop on the DTHS baseball team and quarterback on the football team, all-conference in both instances. Patsy Ann was leader of the cheerleading squad and secretary of the student body, so a romance between her and the school’s star athlete seemed star-crossed.

Even her parents didn’t mind — Mike was a good Catholic boy; so what if he wasn’t Irish? When they kept dating after high school, she and Mike had been sat down by her father, who let them both know that there would always be a place for Mike at the dealership, if the boy chose not to follow his folks into their restaurant business.

College offers had come along — several small schools offered sports scholarships, and Mike’s grades were good — but Patsy Ann’s boyfriend had just kept working with his folks at their restaurant, helping out, learning the trade. Patsy Ann had enrolled at Northern, and she and her “guy” had spoken often about the future — how she would get a job teaching high school lit somewhere in the area and he’d take over his family business.

After driving around till dusk, the couple wound up back at the park, where a dance band consisting of Northern music majors played in the bandshell, the folding chairs gone to make room for dancing. The clear sky glittered with stars, and an art moderne — slice of moon made the heavens seem more like the faux-variety you danced beneath in a ballroom.

The other couples were in their teens and twenties, with a few older married folks joining in, on the slow tunes. Michael demurred at jitterbugging, and was amusingly horrified by “The Beer Barrel Polka” and everything it wrought among the dancers. But he seemed happy to hold his girl in his arms for “The Very Thought of You.”

They did not stay for the fireworks, preferring to make their own by driving into the country to one of their favorite parking places, a little access inlet to a cornfield, whose tall stalks were brushed ivory in the moonlight, waving lazily in the evening breeze. They necked and petted in the front seat, but it wasn’t long before they crawled unceremoniously in back.

The sundress’s top gathered at her waist, the dress hiked up, her panties off but the sexy little wedgies on, Patsy Ann lay back, watching as Michael withdrew his wallet and found the little square packet.

“So what if I get pregnant?” she asked.

He thought about it, then, gently, said, “No. We’ve always been careful. We’ll be careful tonight.”

Other than that small moment of reality, the lovemaking was wonderfully dream-like; he was always so tender with her, and yet commanding. At first he just looked down at her pale flesh in the moonlight and said she looked beautiful; then he began to kiss her breasts, and was still doing that when he entered her. They came to climax quickly, together, in shudders that looked like pain but weren’t.

They cuddled in the backseat in their various states of disarray, the sundress bunched at her waist, his trousers and underwear clumped down around his left ankle like a big bulky bandage. They had fallen asleep when sharp cracks woke them both — Michael sat up straight, reacting as if to gunshots.

Through the front window, blossoming just above the cornfield, they could see the fireworks going on at the park right now. They exchanged grins and resumed a cuddly position and enjoyed what they could see of it — not every attempt rose high enough.

Still, they got a kick out of what they did see: a shower of silver here... bursting rockets there... endless sprays and arrays of red and white and blue sparks...

Finally they got their clothes back on — though all the smoothing out in the world wouldn’t hide what the sundress had been through — and Patsy Ann had Mike take the wheel. He said little as they drove back into town; he appeared distracted.

For what seemed like forever, but was really just four silent minutes, they sat in front of her house, a two-story Dutch colonial on South Third, a few blocks from the park.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, finally.

“No. Everything’s right. Perfect.”

But there was something in his tone...

She thought perhaps she understood. “It’s difficult for you, isn’t it? Just picking up where you left off.”

He grunted a little laugh, gave her the half-smile. “You’ve always been smarter than me. Not that that’s anything to brag about.”

She saw through the lightness and said, “You can’t do anything about it, Mike — your friends in the Philippines. You know MacArthur will go back for them, when he can.”

“Dugout Doug,” Mike said softly.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Michael, there are things you can do for the war effort, if you want to.”

“Giving speeches?”

“No! I’m sure there must be other things. And—”

“Patricia Ann — it’s not just that I’m not over there, doing my share. Not just that I... escaped from Bataan, tail tucked between my legs...”