Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose and searched down at the old brown corded rug where as a child I had mustered troops of little green army men. He shook his head, frowned at the rug, put his glasses on, left the room.
Later Darlene went to bed and my father sat silent in the living room watching TV, the sound of Johnny Carson’s monologue drifting faintly through the house.
I tapped on the glass with my fingernails until Billie came to the window between our rooms. The parents still had no idea she’d managed to open the thing—mangling one of my mother’s good butter knives in the process—or that it had become our private meeting place. They merely rolled eyes whenever they saw the colorful landscape Billie had painted on the glass, and they didn’t even seem to notice the latest details Billie had added to her masterpiece, including the lipstick envelope floating in the sky like a flying carpet, and a 45rpm record labeled Key to the Highway sprouting out of the ground, the combined effect now approaching something between Peter Max and Salvador Dalí.
Billie undid the latch and lifted the lower sash, dragged the vanity stool over and sat down.
“You’re not really gonna leave tonight, are you?” I said.
“No… I guess not,” she said. The anger had gone from her eyes, her face was puffy, cheeks tear-stained. “What would I do out there anyway, Archer? My mom’s right. I’d probably get myself arrested again. Or shot, like she said. Last thing I want to do is prove her right.” She stood and paced the room, arms flailing the air. “Everything’s so messed up—the war, the whole fucking country, all the killing and the hate and the lies. And it’s like the people in this stupid little town can’t even see how sick it is. I just don’t understand.”
She returned to the stool, shoulders slumped, eyes hurt and worried, arms quiet now. She pulled the pink lipstick envelope out of the pocket of her overalls and handed it to me. “Maybe you should keep this,” she said, like she didn’t know her own mind.
She didn’t come to the kitchen table for breakfast.
That shouldn’t have worried anyone because she’d slept late almost every day since moving in. But Darlene stood at the harvest gold stove, frying eggs in one pan and stirring bits of leftover hamburger into a separate pan of grease-soaked potatoes, and she asked me to see if Billie wanted some. I realized this was a ruse to get me to check up on Billie, but I was craving the same reassurance.
I knocked lightly on the dayroom door and, when there was no answer, opened it slowly. “Billie, breakfast is ready.”
She was asleep in the rollaway bed and didn’t stir. She slept on her stomach with her arms wrapped tightly around the pillow as if she had tackled sleep itself and pinned it to the bed.
“My old man says most of them weren’t even students,” Timmy said.
“Outside agitators. Bunch of commie pussies trying to take over America.” He slammed his locker door, closed the lock and spun the combination dial with a hint of violence.
“I don’t know,” Joey said. “I think they’re mostly just kids who don’t believe in the war.”
“They’re not much older than us, Tim,” I said. “Some of them are girls.”
“A girl can’t be a communist? Take a look at your sister, numbnuts.”
“Stepsister. And she’s more of a pacifist than a communist.”
“Same shit, different pile. Fuck em. Shoot em all. Mow em down and leave the bodies as a warning.” He conjured an invisible machine gun in his hands and mimed a wide arc of rapid fire, snarling the rat-a-tat sound effect through his teeth.
“Jesus, Timmy. You’re a sick man,” I said, and we all laughed like that was funny, and we headed toward the cafeteria for Taco Tuesday.
At baseball practice Billie showed up and sat alone in the bleachers.
She waved and hollered encouragement when I stepped to the plate. Hank was pitching batting practice, helping out Coach Fish who stood at home dispensing advice and correcting my stance.
Noticing Billie, Hank said, “Hey, Bullseye, got your own personal cheerleader, huh?” Then to her, “Hey, show us your pom-poms, Red.”
Billie shook her head. “Wow, so original. Smack one up the middle, Archer. This pitcher’s a bum.”
I took my cuts. A few misses, a couple flyballs, some grounders, one solid liner. Then I played third base while a few other guys took BP, until Coach Fish looked at the sky. A line of clouds, gray as granite, was sailing our way on a warm wind out of the west. “Better call it a day, boys. Looks like we’re in for a little storm.”
Billie was waiting by the chain-link gate next to the dugout. Plainly dressed compared to her usual attire. Bellbottom jeans that looked close to new. A green blouse with long sleeves. No sunglasses, no bangles, hair somewhat tamed. Almost like a normal teenager.
“Guess what,” she said, “I got the job.”
“Uh, what? What job? What are you talking about?”
Hank strolled up and butted right in like he was being clever. “Yeah, Red, what are you talking about?” Out of uniform he looked more like the old Hank—white t-shirt and straight-leg blue jeans like every other Lupoyoma jock in those days. Popping his glove with a fist.
Billie ignored him. “Waitress at the Weeping Willow Cafe. I start tomorrow.”
“Wow,” was all I could get out. It seemed like a sharp right turn for her.
Hank piped up. “Nothing wrong with an honest day of work, Bullseye.”
“Listen to you, pretending to be a grownup,” Billie said.
“And you, pretending not to be a juvenile delinquent.”
Billie flipped him off, but with a sarcastic grin.
“I’ll have to stop in for a burger. I’d like to see you in one of those uniforms they have.”
“Oh, gag me.”
“Why? You’re cute. Weird… but cute.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I think we should celebrate,” Hank said. “Got a cooler full of beer in the Mustang. Up for a little cruise?”
Billie said, “No thanks, let’s go, Archer.”
“You know, there’s a double feature at the drive-in this weekend, my treat. Bullseye could come along, too.”
“You’re not used to hearing no, I guess.” Billie said.
“Hey, I’m going off to war—you’re supposed to be nice to me, you know? Take my mind off it all, show me a good time.” He gave her one of his goofy winks.
“What’s playing?” I said, curious about the possibility, although Billie shot me a glare.
“Planet of the Apes and something else,” Hank said.
Billie scoffed. “You don’t even realize that movie’s about the foolishness of war, do ya?”
“Jeez, why do you have to take everything so damn serious?” Hank said.
“So war isn’t serious enough for you?”
“Look Red, I’m the one who’s gonna be marching through the jungle in a few weeks, not you. I’m just trying to have a little fun while I can. You know, you’re cute but you don’t know shit from Shinola. You think the commies are just gonna drink a Coke and declare peace like that stupid commercial?” He laughed at his own witty reference.
Billie said, “Oh man! You can’t possibly believe all that John Wayne Green Beret domino theory bullshit. You’re part of the military industrial complex, soldier boy. Just a cog in the war machine and you don’t even know it.”
“You better watch yourself—no one wants to hear that anti-war crap around here.”
“Couldn’t care less.”
“Like I said, cute but weird. But hey, no skin off my back.”
“I don’t give a damn if you think I’m cute.”
“Aw, sure you do,” he said. And he walked away.
I felt the first spit of rain.
After school on Friday I went to work at the Call & Record to stuff the weekend edition.
During a break, I looked through the A-section and the B-section and didn’t find a single column inch on the dead students at Kent State. As if it didn’t happen. After all, Percival J. Terwilliger wouldn’t want to upset the advertisers.
But when I got home, Cronkite was covering the demonstrations and student strikes that were breaking out all across the country. The Kent State campus was now closed and occupied by armed National Guardsmen, and in San Francisco a hundred and fifty thousand people had marched that day to protest the shootings, the invasion of Cambodia, the draft and the Vietnam war in general.
My father sat in his chair, leaning forward, grievance breaking out on his face like sweat. I plopped down at one end of the floral couch, Grandma Junia sat at the other end, elegantly dragging on a Tareyton and blowing her smoke toward the ceiling with a patronizing sigh.
Ever since the wedding, Grandma Junia often stopped by after work, ostensibly to see if Darlene needed any help with dinner, but actually as an excuse for a custom gin and tonic (with four ice cubes, a squirt of lime and two maraschino cherries, sunken), which Darlene still hadn’t learned to assemble and serve in such a way that forestalled complaint.
Darlene appeared with her latest attempt and delivered it to Grandma Junia. Cronkite’s fatherly voice was reporting a clash between anti-war demonstrators and New York construction workers. Hundreds of angry little faces on the TV screen, some of them walking through the crowd holding a huge American flag spread out flat above their heads. Several men rushed past a line of police officers and began to beat up the anti-war demonstrators with fists and hardhats and even bats and iron pipes. My father stretched forward, his whole body tensed and his face screwed up like he was about to spit on someone. He pointed at the TV with his glass. “Your daughter should see this, Darlene.”
Darlene stood in the kitchen archway, closed her eyes and sighed.
He shifted his eyes to me. “You better take notice, too,” he said. “This is what real Americans think of Billie and her friends at Kent State. She needs to understand, all you kids need to understand, working people in this country won’t put up with this nonsense forever.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard the latest,” Grandma Junia said. “She’s joined the ranks of the proletariat, herself. Waiting tables at the Weeping Willow’s greasy spoon… of all places.”
With the words “of all places” Grandma Junia not only managed to signal her general disapproval of the Weeping Willow’s clientele and their kitchen and their food, but also Pop and Molly, not to mention Billie herself and any other employees of the establishment. In Grandma Junia’s mouth, of all places was a remarkably efficient phrase.
“That’s good news!” Darlene said. “Isn’t it?”
It was kind of sad the way Darlene directed this question to me, as if I was her best shot at finding an ally in the room. I gave her a pity nod and smile.
My father said, “From what I’ve heard, she’ll fit right in with some of the other new hires over there.” He put extra emphasis on the word other, sort of a nudge-nudge in the direction of Grandma Junia. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, and he shushed the room as the network switched to live coverage of President Nixon holding another press conference at the White House.
On our black and white TV, the President wore gray—a dark gray suit and tie, snowy gray shirt, slick gray hair, pale gray face, and a mask of somber gray sincerity. He claimed the aims of the demonstrators were also his aims. “They want peace, they want to stop the killing, they want to end the draft and get out of Vietnam. I agree with everything they’re trying to accomplish,” Nixon said. He promised that what he’d done in Cambodia would help achieve those goals, would hasten an end to the war.
“Now, see—the man knows what he’s doing. He has a plan.” my father pointed his empty glass around the room, emphasizing his point to each of us in turn.
“Give him a chance.”
The Blues & Billie Armstrong is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance of the fictional characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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