Dan Wakefield - Home Free

He had told it all in a steady, sure monotone, as flat as reading a stock market prices report. When he finished, he took the last sip of his beer, then folded the can double with his fist and tossed it out onto the dusty ground. Gene listened to a fly that was buzzing around him. He didn’t say anything. What he thought was, You are way out there, man. You are farther along than I am .

“Fuck a duck,” Coach Billy said. “Let’s play some checkers.”

Gene liked the Coaches and Pal but he really wasn’t part of their family. They had their own thing going. And the house. The house had a spooky kind of vacancy about it, an essence of empty, wind whooshing through it, old boards groaning in the night. Sitting in the main room sharing a joint, no one talking, no sound but each person’s suck of inhalation, Gene was suddenly swept with the feeling that the house was haunted and the people in it were the ghosts. Him, too.

He went into town and got a room and a job. The job was combination grill-man and waiter at Buster’s, an old-fashioned hole in the wall with a six-stool counter and two small tables. It smelled of grease and summer, and Gene found it comforting. The room was down the street from Buster’s. It had one twin bed with a large sag in the center, a rickety chest of drawers, and an old-fashioned washbasin. There was a bathroom down the hall with a tub on iron feet and a chain-flush toilet. The setup was fine. It was all he needed. Or wanted.

He went down to Boston to get his gear, throwing stuff as quick as he could into a streamer trunk and two battered suitcases. He had hoped to get it over with and go without running into Lou, but when he finished he stopped and rolled a joint, sitting on the trunk, and heard her steps and the sound of the key in the lock that felt like metal twisting in his skull.

At least she wasn’t with a guy. Still, it hurt. The sight of her, making him want to melt. She was wearing a light yellow summer dress and sandals. Her hair was tied with a piece of yellow yarn. She closed the door and leaned against it.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“You all packed?”

“Yeh.”

“Kitchen stuff, too?”

“Keep it.”

“But the stewpot, and—”

“Keep it. Please.”

“OK. Gimme a hit?”

“Sorry. Sure.”

He stood up and went to her and handed her the joint, trying not to touch her. He had the feeling if he touched her he’d burn. She closed her eyes and she took the drag. He forgot she always closed her eyes. All of a sudden he wanted her no matter what. He laid his hand on her cheek. She coughed, moved away, and handed him the joint back.

“No,” she said.

“Please. Lou.”

“Don’t make it hard.”

“Just this once. The last.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“For God sake don’t beg! ”

She turned away from him, folding her arms as if closing the matter.

“OK,” he said.

He picked up his suitcases.

“Barnes’ll get the trunk,” he said. “He’ll get it to me.”

She turned toward him.

“Gene,” she said, “I wasn’t being bitchy. It would have hurt. It would have hurt too much.”

“Nothing hurts,” he said, “if you can’t feel anything.”

“But you’re not like that,” she said.

“Maybe I can get to be.”

She opened the door and he walked out, past her, careful not to brush against, the suitcase bumping his knee as he went down the stairs. At the bottom he heard the door close.

He hung out at Jerry and Monica’s a lot. He’d ask them to play the Linda record that he listened to when he first came.

Time washes clean , she told him.

He hoped so.

He walked, swam, fished, and did a lot of dope.

Still, he knew it would be a long, long time. To get Lou out of him. To be empty again.

On sweltering summer nights he lay on his bed in his undershorts, smoking. That reminded him of Lou, too. Not the smoking, the undershorts. He had worn the boxer kind all his life till he met her and she told him jockey shorts were much sexier. He had never thought of men’s underwear being sexy, just necessary. He asked her what was sexy about jockey shorts and she explained they showed the bulge of the cock and that was a real turn-on. The boxer shorts didn’t show anything unless the guy had an erection. It made sense to Gene and the next day he went down to the Grand Union and bought four cellophaned three-packs of jockey shorts and had worn that kind ever since.

He reached down and touched himself, thinking of Lou. Then drew his hand back. The most depressing thing of all was jerking off thinking of Lou. Realizing now the only way he could have her was in memory. He slipped on some jeans and a Maine state tourist office T-shirt that said “LOVE ME,” and his old moccasins, and walked down to the pier. There was a couple holding hands, and a bunch of high-school kids in a rowboat, diving off and scrambling back in. Gene sat down at the end and let the wave lap lull him. Occasionally, a foghorn hoot, low and long, like a hurt cow.

I am here, he thought, on a pier in Damariscotta, Maine, U.S.A., in the summer of my twenty-sixth year. In the year of Our Lord 1970.

That much was clear. But there was one thing he didn’t know at all.

Why.

But it didn’t seem to matter much.

One day Barnes showed up alone.

“Where’s Nell?” Gene asked him.

“She left.”

“Boston?”

“No. Me.”

“Oh.”

They went for a walk, out along the riverbank. After a while they stopped and sat on some rocks. Barnes picked a tall piece of sea grass and put it in his mouth.

“What happened?” Gene asked him,

“Nothin. That’s the trouble. Nothin’s been happening too long. I took her for granted. Didn’t pay attention to her. Wasn’t even fucking her much the last couple months. She knew I screwed around. She never complained. About anything. Then she just left. Couple days ago after she’d spent the night I woke up late and she was gone and so was the stuff she used to keep at my place—you know, a comb, a sweat shirt, toothbrush, odds and ends. I called her up and asked what was wrong and she said she just couldn’t take it any longer. I couldn’t argue, you know, cause I knew what she meant and she was right. It’s just that I hadn’t expected it. I figured I could keep on being a slob and have her around when I wanted her and not around if I didn’t feel like it. But you can’t do that to people.”

“Did you love her?”

“How the hell do I know? I thought she was swell. I took her for granted. Now it’s too late.”

“Does it hurt bad?”

“Well, shit. I mean it wasn’t some great world-smashing love affair or anything. I’m not going to bleed to death. I just feel lonesome right now. And stupid. If I’d paid a little more attention …”

He spit out the piece of grass.

“It’s funny,” he said. “It’s like you and me did the wrong things, but the opposite wrong things. With our women.”

“How?”

“I mean I didn’t love mine enough and you loved yours too much.”

“I don’t see that, man. If you love someone, how can you love them too much?”

“It’s hard to take. For the other person.”

“Being loved?”

“Damn right.”

“I thought it was supposed to be what everybody wants.”

“It is supposed to be. But then when it happens a lot of people can’t take it. It’s hard. Especially when it’s a lot.”

“Why?”

“Listen. Have you ever had some chick fall madly in love with you? Want to be with you all the time, tell you all the time how terrific you are and how much she loves you, hang on every damn thing you say, look at you all the time with big lovesick eyes?”