John Toole - The Neon Bible

When the preacher finished we all sat down, and Mr. Farney talked about what a fine class we were and said he was glad to have had us for pupils. All the parents clapped. Then we sang "Dixie," and everybody sang with us, and Mr. Farney was wrinkling his nose at the piano. Then Mr. Farney gave us a certificate saying we had satisfactorily completed grade school and could enter any state high school with it, and he hoped we would do just that. We pledged allegiance to the flag and recited the poem. Everybody recited it too fast and ruined the whole thing. Then I was out of grade school.

I passed Miss Moore, and she said she was proud of me, and I went over to where Aunt Mae was waiting. She kissed me, and I looked around to see if anybody saw her, and I could feel myself turning red. Aunt Mae didn't see me do this, though. She was looking for something in her purse. When she brought it out, it was something wrapped like a present. I opened it up, and it was a watch, a real new one that must have cost at least thirty dollars. I thanked her and wondered where she could have got the money to buy it.

We went outside in the still night. It wasn't too hot, because the real hot weather didn't come to the valley until August, but it was just still with the sound of some kind of bug I didn't know the name of. People were coming out of the hall and nodding at Aunt Mae. Everybody knew her from her singing. I started to walk toward the hill, but Aunt Mae said, "Over here, David. Clyde's going to drive us to the hill." I hadn't noticed that he'd been with us all the time. There he was standing next to Aunt Mae. I wanted to walk, but I went with them to his truck.

"Here, David, get in." Aunt Mae held the door open for me, and I got up on the running board.

"No, Mae, there ain't enough room for him up here. Get in the back, boy, but watch out for my fiddle." Then I heard him say to Aunt Mae, "I bet he'd rather ride in the back than up here with us."

"You can ride up here if you want, David." Aunt Mae leaned out of the door. I knew Clyde didn't want it, so I said no and climbed up in the back. We started off, and I sat with my legs hanging down the tailgate. Main Street passed behind me. I looked down at the street and saw it flowing like the river flowed under the bridge at the old war plant when it was flooding. Cars going the other way passed by, and I watched them until their taillights turned into small red points down by the base of the other hill. The truck had a canvas roof and sides, so I couldn't see the stars or the houses passing alongside. Clyde's fiddle was hitting up against my back. I got mad that I didn't get up front like Aunt Mae said. I wanted to ride in a truck, but not in my suit with that big fiddle. I looked through the little window in the back of the cab where Clyde and Aunt Mae were. Clyde kept leaning over and trying to get his face under Aunt Mae's hat. Aunt Mae was almost out her door. I wondered if Clyde was watching the road. I never thought old men still liked women. The boys at school said they couldn't do anything anyway, so I wondered about Clyde again. He must have been a few years older than Aunt Mae, and she was getting old. The truck started going slower and slower.

Clyde kept his head under Aunt Mae's hat for almost a block. I heard Aunt Mae say something loud, and he came from under her hat and looked back at the road. Then a car went by the truck so close the canvas shook. I heard Aunt Mae really curse up front.

The truck stopped. We were at the bottom of the hill. I jumped down and just grabbed Clyde's fiddle before it fell out too. When I had it back in, I walked around to the door. Aunt Mae was saying, "Alright, Clyde, a little while." I put my hand on the door handle to let her out, but she said to me, "Look, honey, go wait there by the path for me. I'm going to stay here with Clyde for a while. Now, don't go off, you hear. I don't want to walk up the path alone. I won't be too long." She was going to say something else, but Clyde pulled her away from the window, so I went over to the path and waited.

The honeysuckle was thick around the old stumps there. It smelled wonderful and strong on the heavy, still air. There wasn't any breeze to blow it away the way it did sometimes. It just hung around there and got in your nose. I sat on one of the stumps and picked a few of the little flowers and smelled them, but you couldn't tell the difference from the air all around. The moon was shining on the honeysuckle and me and Clyde's truck. I looked over there once, but Clyde and Aunt Mae weren't sitting up. I couldn't see either one of them in the cab. I just saw the tip of Aunt Mae's hat sticking up by the window. I wondered what they were doing, and then I thought of when Aunt Mae went with George when I was little. I wondered if they did what the boys said at school. Aunt Mae was so old, though. She was sixty before we ever moved into the hills, and that was eight years ago when I went into Mrs. Watkins' for the first time.

I sat on the stump and looked up at the moon and down at Clyde's truck and smelled the honeysuckle, and I felt like I never felt before in my life. The warm air was all around me, sweet and still. It was so quiet and dark over by Clyde's truck. Clyde was doing something I never had done or even thought about much. Some of the boys at school went out with girls to the movies, but I never had. I never thought about taking one out. I didn't know any, living in the hills away from most of the town. I wondered if they'd like me if I asked them to go out. I was fourteen, and I never thought what I looked like. I knew I was getting tall, though.

Then I looked down at the watch Aunt Mae gave me, and I looked over at the truck. I heard her talking now, but I couldn't understand what she was saying. I didn't hear Clyde, but I could hear somebody breathing. Then Aunt Mae was quiet again. The watch said exactly eleven-thirty. I set it by the clock on the drugstore next to the hall where we had the graduation, and it was still running. It was hurting my wrist, so I loosened the leather band and wondered if it was real leather. Since the war everything was synthetic. They said after the war we were going to have plastic houses and helicopters, but I never saw any, and I wondered if they had them in New York. That was where they had everything. I looked at the watch. It was ten of twelve. Clyde's truck was still quiet. I was getting mad at him. We should have been at the house about an hour ago to see how Flora was doing with Mother. Then Aunt Mae's hat came up all the way. I heard her cough. Clyde came up by the wheel. Aunt Mae said, "Good night, Clyde." She opened the door. Clyde didn't say anything but just started the motor. Aunt Mae got off the running board and closed the door. I heard Clyde trying to shift gears, but his truck was old, bought before the war, and he wasn't having too much luck. Aunt Mae walked over to where I was standing. She took my wrist and looked at the time and said, "Gee." We stood there and watched Clyde trying to get into first. The motor and the noise of the gears broke the still and the honeysuckle so much I wanted to go over and tell him to be quiet. I looked at Aunt Mae, and she was looking at the truck with that line around her mouth she always got when she was mad. Clyde got going at last. We watched him go off with his fiddle bouncing in the back.

We walked up the path. Aunt Mae said the honeysuckle smelled better than Clyde's breath. I didn't answer her because I didn't know what to say to something like that. We walked on a while longer, and I looked down at some of the houses where I knew they were having graduation parties. I wasn't invited to any. I stopped Aunt Mae and turned so the moonlight fell on my face, and I asked her how I looked. She looked at my face for a while, and then she put her hand at the back of my neck and said I was going to be fine-looking in about a year or so. My body was getting some lines, she said, and my face was getting to look like a man's too. We started walking again. I looked down at my suit. The moon was shining on the buttons of my coat. For the first time I noticed they weren't in a line with the opening of my coat. The suit was double-breasted. Then I remembered nobody at the graduation had a double-breasted suit. I was the only one. Most of the boys had on a sport coat with a different pair of pants, a different color, but they cost money.