Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

He got all dressed and splashed some Old Spice on him right after supper, but the party didn’t begin till nine, and he didn’t want to just hang around the house and let his mother try to sniff out a lot of information from him about where he was going and who he was going with and why he wasn’t taking Buddie. He closed the door to his room and played Victory at Sea over once to get in the right mood of confidence and positive thinking, and then he got the keys to his father’s car and took off.

Sonny just drove around for a while, the way you do when you’re killing time, turning here and there with no particular purpose, gliding along and letting the people who were going some particular place zip past. Just driving could calm you down sometimes. The wheel gave you something to hold on to, your mind could switch off everything but signals and traffic and your body sort of went on automatic, working the clutch and shifting gears, pressing the brake and nudging the accelerator just right. Sonny was glad of cars. Not just because they got you someplace, but more because they gave you something to do. Even as a little kid who wasn’t old enough to drive yet, cars had helped Sonny that way, filling time, like when him and Dicky Bishop or Bobby Sturdivant would sit on the front steps of somebody’s house on the block on those long early evenings of summer after supper when the sky was gray pearl and got dark so slow you barely even noticed it happening. The way you played “Cars” was to have each person guess what kind of car would be the next one to pass—Ford or Chevy or Buick, or maybe a long shot like Studebaker. For each right guess you got a point, and the kid who had the most points after it got too dark to see what kind of car it was for sure won the game. Actually there wasn’t much traffic on the block and you could win by scores of 3–1 or 2–0. There were enough cars that passed to make it possible to play if you sat for a couple hours, but few enough so that it was kind of exciting when one came by. When you guessed a lot of them right, it made you feel kind of spooky, like you had the power to see into the future.

Sonny drove around for almost an hour but it still was only twenty after eight, so he fell by the Topper to have a couple drinks. The place was just warming up for a big Saturday night, the smoke and the voices getting thick, and the colored guys of the Rhythm-Airs combo breaking out their instruments and plugging in the electric organ. Sonny took a seat at the bar and ordered a seven-and-seven. He had just started to take the first sip when some joker slapped him on the back so hard he jiggled the glass and spilled a little bit, hearing at the same time the unmistakable, maniacal laugh of Uncle Buck.

“Kilroy is here!” Buck said in greeting, and Sonny turned around and shook hands with him.

“How about stepping over to a dark little booth and joining me and a charming little lady for a drink?”

Sonny didn’t really feel like hearing Buck’s latest stories, it wouldn’t help the confident, positive mood he was trying to build, but he couldn’t see any way out of it.

Buck’s girl for the evening was a bright-dyed redhead with a tremendous set of knockers that you got a pretty good view of through the wide cleavage of her tight, V-necked purple-cotton blouse. Buck just introduced her as “Gerry.” His girls never seemed to have last names. They were always named something like Gerry or Flo or Stell, and they always looked wild and hard, like they’d had a lot of experience and were out to get some more.

“Hey, where’d ya get that fancy shirt, cowboy?” Buck asked, reaching across the table and fingering the satiny material.

Sonny could feel himself blushing, fearing maybe the shirt looked silly after all.

“I donno,” he said. “Somewhere or other.”

“Must of got it off one of the rodeo riders at the State Fair,” Buck said with a laugh. “Hey, where ya headed all spruced up like that? Got a heavy date?”

“Not exactly,” Sonny said.

He was terrified that he might let something slip about the party and Buck would insist on going along. God, Sonny could picture it. Buck would find out it was an arty crowd and start telling stories about his days in Paris studying with Rembrandt, and if anyone pointed out Rembrandt was dead, Buck would get pissed off and claim it was Rembrandt’s grandson or something.

“Gotta meet someone in a while,” Sonny said.

“Aha! A clandestine rendezvous!”

Gerry looked at Buck like he was a little wacky, or maybe was speaking a foreign language.

Buck nudged her, gave her a big lecherous wink, and said, “My esteemed nephew here is one of the silent types—but don’t be fooled. Confucius say, ‘He who talk little, get much!’”

Buck roared and slapped the table. Sonny bolted a slug of his drink, feeling his ears go red.

“I think he’s kinda cute,” Gerry said, looking at Sonny in a way that made him press his legs together.

“See there, I told ya! The silent ones get ’em every time!”

“Shee-it,” Sonny said, finishing off his drink.

“Hey, let me fill that glass for you, friend and neighbor.”

Before Sonny could say anything, Buck had called the waitress and grandly ordered another round. When Buck bought you a drink, he made it seem like Diamond Jim Brady had just ordered champagne for the house.

“And how’s your good mother, my God-fearing sister?” Buck asked.

“O.K., I guess.”

“You may tell her,” Buck said with a flourish, “that her ne’er-do-well little brother has just secured himself an enviable position as sales manager of an up-and-coming new corporation. A group of young go-getters have recently purchased a franchise for a new type of Infra-Ray sandwich-heater that will revolutionize the concept of the hot lunch. You don’t need an oven, don’t need a grille, just set ’em up on the counter of a drugstore, what have you. And yours truly will head up the management of sales for the entire Midwest.”

Sonny translated that to mean that Buck would be selling sandwich-warmers on the East Side of Indianapolis.

“Seriously,” Buck said, switching from his fun tone to his serious, radio-announcer voice, “there’s a mint in this thing. It’s there for the taking.”

“Great,” Sonny said.

Buck laughed and put his arm around Gerry, telling her in his fun voice, “Stick with me, baby, and you’ll be fartin’ through silk!”

“Mr. Big Bucks, huh?” Gerry said suspiciously, but she didn’t move away when Buck’s hand slid down and gave her a friendly little pinch on the right boob.

Sonny slugged down the drink as quick as he could and said he really had to take off. He was sweaty and nervous, and wanted to be alone, wanted to try and collect himself before the party. It was almost nine.

Buck shook hands and gave him a knowing leer for good luck, and Sonny said good-bye and headed for the door. Just when he got about halfway there, in the middle of the goddam bar, he turned back around as Buck yelled, “Hey, Sonny”—everyone looked up from their drinks and talk—“remember my motto, ‘Work like a Trojan, especially at night!’”

Sonny tried to grin, hearing snickers and giggles all around him, and ducked for the door, frying inside.

The party was at a guy’s named Oliver Shawl, who lived on Talbott Street around 21st. Although the advancing They had already crossed 21st Street on their long march north, They had left some pockets of whites still hanging on, as in this area. The whites who still lived there either couldn’t afford to move or didn’t care about Them coming in and lowering all the property values. That was the reason many whites retreated from the black wave, not because of prejudice but because of property values. It was strictly a practical matter, and it saddened many of the liberal whites who wanted to live next to coloreds but couldn’t afford to because of property values going down, but did have enough money to afford moving to a nice new neighborhood farther north. So the whites who were left were either the ones who were so poor they couldn’t even afford not to be able to move because they couldn’t afford to stay in a mixed neighborhood, or the impractical dreamers like artists and oddballs who didn’t even care about property values.