Sharyn McCrumb - Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

“What did you expect him to do? You were staring at him like he was Baldur the Beautiful. He probably thought you were a dangerous lunatic, and he was trying to pacify you by not making any sudden moves.”

Carol Lee wasn’t listening. “His eyes are the most beautiful shade of brown,” she sighed.

“Like horse manure,” I said briskly. “Can we go home now?”

It is a half-mile walk from the high school to Sycamore Street, where Carol Lee lives-around the corner and two houses away from me. I yawned all the way home, listening to Carol Lee’s endless babbling about the mysterious senior. There was no point in trying to work up any enthusiasm for her latest obsession, because Carol Lee fell in love about every three weeks, always with some good-looking total stranger, and after she wore herself out scheming over ways to meet the object of her affections, and speculated endlessly on what he was “really” like, she would lose interest and direct her attention to another victim.

Honestly , I thought, she might as well develop a crush on Paul McCartney; he is no less unattainable than any of her other crushes . Carol Lee disdained movie poster romances, though; she dwells in possibility, which in her case is a very long commute from real life. She never actually dated any of her idols; in fact, I think she barely spoke to any of them. The chief victim of her delusions was me: I had to hear about Mr. Wonder-of-the-Week in our nightly phone conversations. The only thing that made it bearable was the short duration of each crush. About the time I got bored with hearing about the Piggly Wiggly bag boy or the minister’s son, her fantasies had a cast change, and the whole process began again. I predicted that this crush would last exactly one week: the time it would take Carol Lee to notice that the bouncing Mr. X wasn’t wearing his class ring.

A week later, though, Carol Lee’s ravings showed no sign of tapering off, and I was beginning to worry.

Friday night the phone rang.

“Elizabeth! I found out what his name is. You know- the boy.”

Of course I knew. She had scarcely talked about anything else in days. “Hello, Carol Lee,” I said. That was encouragement enough.

“His name is Cholly Barnes, and he’s-”

“Charlie?”

“No. Cholly. C-h-o-l-l-y. It’s a family nickname. Short for Collins or something. My informant wasn’t sure. Anyhow, he goes to the Grace Methodist Church, and he drives a green Chevy. He’s a photographer for the yearbook staff, and he plays the guitar. He likes apples-”

“And he’s going with somebody else.”

“What?” gasped Carol Lee. “Oh. You noticed that he’s not wearing his class ring, didn’t you? He lost it on a fishing trip. Actually, he doesn’t date much.”

“According to the FBI wiretap, I suppose?”

She laughed. “I just talked to a couple of girls who know him, that’s all.”

“Like his mother and sisters?”

“He doesn’t have any sisters,” Carol Lee replied promptly. “But Daddy knows his grandfather.”

“Oh, Carol,” I said (and I was not quoting Neil Sedaka), “have you no sense of decency? What will you do next? Start peeking in his windows?”

“Hey, that gives me an idea!”

“Oh, no…”

“Tomorrow is Saturday. We can go for a bike ride.”

“And?” Actually I didn’t want to know.

“We can ride by his house. I found out where he lives, too. Maybe he’ll be outside, mowing the lawn or something.”

“Absolutely not. I refuse. I am not going. You can’t make me.”

I said that the whole mile over to his house. “This is ridiculous!” I said that about fifty times, too. I don’t know why I kept muttering. Carol Lee wasn’t listening, and I didn’t need any convincing.

We kept going around and around the block. I began to feel like a vulture. To relieve the monotony and take my mind off how stupid I felt, I started counting the bricks on the left side of his house. The only reason I kept going was loyalty. Carol was my friend, and it was my duty to stand by her in her madness. Sancho Panza on a Schwinn-that’s me , I thought.

He’s never going to come out . I pictured him lurking behind the living room curtains, watching two giggling freshmen in orbit around his block. There’s no way he’s coming out of that house , I thought. He’ll stay barricaded in there until doomsday. He won’t check the mail; he won’t retrieve the newspaper; he won’t go to school on Monday. He’ll never come out. He’ll probably leave instructions that when he dies, they are to cremate him in the toaster oven and flush his remains down the toilet. Meanwhile we’ll just keep circling. And Carol will never leave. We’ll be doomed to an eternal bike path around this block . I could hear Rod Serling solemnly describing our trajectory: “Elizabeth MacPherson and Carol Lee Jenkins, two typical teenage girls with ordinary hopes and dreams, who started out on a Saturday morning bike ride, and ended up perpetually circling, forever straining for a glimpse of Cholly Barnes as they hurtle past the brick ranch house on Maple Street, trapped in an orbital obsession known only in The Twilight Zone .”

Finally I’d had enough. I was tired, sweaty, hungry, and, above all, I felt utterly foolish. “Look, Carol Lee,” I said, edging my bike to within earshot. “I’m going home now. I’ve got motion sickness.”

“Oh, just a few more minutes,” said Carol Lee. “He’s bound to come out sometime.”

“Sorry,” I told her. “I’m all pedaled out.” As we turned the corner onto Fourth Street, I steered my bike away from Carol Lee’s and headed straight for Elm Avenue. I was going home. I glanced back to see her pumping furiously along, determined not to abandon the vigil.

I had been home about two hours-long enough to take a half-hour bubble bath, fix myself a sandwich, and immerse myself in The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker -when the phone rang.

It was Carol Lee, wailing.

I almost dropped the phone. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, Elizabeth! The most awful thing happened.”

She’s been hit by a truck , I thought. She’s in the hospital, and they’ve allowed her one last phone call before they cut off her-oh, wait . I suddenly remembered who I was dealing with. This was Carol Lee Jenkins, the Star-Spangled Queen of Melodrama, to whom every hangnail was a tragedy, and she was no doubt calling on her pink Princess phone from her white lace French Provincial bedroom in perfect health.

“What happened?” I sighed.

“He saw me!”

“What?”

“He saw me. Cholly Barnes saw me. He came out to get the newspaper, and he was just straightening up as I came around the block, and he looked right at me.”

Maybe something did happen , I thought. Maybe he smiled and waved for her to stop, and then he went over to the curb to chat with her, and they hit it off beautifully, and now she’s calling to tell me that they’re going to the movies later tonight. Oh, wait, this is Carol Lee’s theoretical love life. Motto: “Not on This Planet.” Okay. Maybe he went out into his yard, picked up the biggest rock he could find, and waited for her next revolution …

“Okay,” I said. “He came out into the yard, picked up the newspaper, and saw you. Then what?”

“That’s it,” said Carol Lee. “Then I came home.”

“So he saw you. Why are you hysterical? Oh, wait. Did he catch you rooting through his garbage cans?”

“No, of course not!”

I didn’t think there was any of course about it, but I was relieved that she had restrained herself. “Okay, he saw you on your bike. Isn’t that what you wanted?”