Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
In the moonlight a hulking shape hurried away on the dirt drive, shadowy at first, then separating into two figures. One was Alice Terwilliger, the other was Billie Armstrong, shaking and mumbling, covering her nakedness with an American flag wrapped like a blanket around her shoulders.
I slipped down into the creek bed and careened my way back to the school grounds, climbed out behind the bleachers, sat down in the dugout on the first-base side, gasping for air, head in my hands.
I closed my eyes and saw it all again. And what if she had seen me, somehow found my panicked eye in the corner of that window, pleaded for my help. And I didn’t move. I could’ve screamed, I could’ve banged on the window. But I didn’t. I watched in silence, confounded, dumbstruck, paralyzed, my mind agape, an empty hole of time where a reaction should’ve been, almost any reaction, but no, just a numb fear I couldn’t explain. I watched it all and I didn’t move.
I slapped myself across the face, trying to sober up, and it stung but also carried a charge, a stab of clarity. It felt right and I did it again. And again. But it wasn’t enough. I beat myself on the forehead with the heels of my hands. I made a fist and punched myself in the mouth. But it wasn’t enough.
Early in the morning, I snuck out to the kitchen and found a note taped to the harvest gold fridge.
Gone fishing! Just kidding, we’re off to the coast for the day. Back for Sunday dinner. You kids be good. ~D.
Grownups can be so naive.
I stared into the depths of the refrigerator for a long time and finally decided on a glass of cold milk. I chugged it down, noticed my swollen, tender lip, refilled the glass, carried it back to my room. I lay on top of the blue wave bedspread, stared at the ceiling and listened to the house. I heard the shower come on in the bathroom, so Billie had somehow made it home and into her room, apparently without alerting anyone, least of all myself. I could barely remember blundering in the back door, relieved the parents weren’t home from their date, collapsing into bed.
The shower ran on and on, and I had to pee. At the bathroom door I heard her choked sobs. I didn’t knock. I went back to my room, stared at the ceiling and held my bladder. My mind was still sluggish, muddled, couldn’t keep up with itself, running, circling, struggling to even watch the replays, to accept what I saw, what I did, what I didn’t do. Much less to ask, what now?
Sinking back into sleep, I had a dream that Billie and I were flying together. I had many dreams of flying as a boy, but in those dreams I always flew alone. In this dream, Billie and I had developed a technique that involved running right off the edge of Flat Top Hill west of Lupoyoma City. We matched the direction and speed of the wind at the exact moment that we leapt into the air. We held hands with our arms spread out like birds touching wings. We rode the wind out over the night-glimmer of the town and coasted down to the damp shore of Lupoyoma Lake like human hang gliders.
I stayed in my room all morning, only coming out when the bathroom was finally free, to piss for like a minute straight and get a bowl of Cheerios, which I ate sitting cross-legged on the blue wave bedspread. The house was pin-drop quiet.
I had checked and seen Billie’s door was closed. She had drawn the curtains over the window between our rooms. No light shone through them, no shadows moved behind them. Which was fine, because I wasn’t ready to meet up with her face-to-face in the kitchen and watch her stammer to explain why she hadn’t gone to work and hadn’t come out of her room as she usually did fresh in the morning, hands dancing, ideas bursting out of her mouth, green eyes alight. And what would I say, anyway?
I was waiting. And I was hiding from whatever I was waiting for. I knew that much.
The doorbell rang around noon.
I didn’t want to answer it, but I didn’t want it to keep ringing. The Giants game had just started, and I was listening on the transistor radio, seeking a distraction, a retreat into the illusion of normalcy. I threw on my old flannel robe and answered the door with the radio in one hand and the earpiece in my ear.
It was Alice, in a prim looking dress that let on she’d come straight from Reverend Jameson’s Sunday service. “Is Billie here?” she said. I pulled the earpiece out of my ear. She looked me over. “Hangover, huh?” And she walked on past, leaving me to close the door. “Which way to Billie’s room?”
I showed the way and lingered in the hallway as I replaced my earpiece. Alice knocked. No answer. Tried the door. Locked. “Billie, it’s Alice. You okay?” A pause, then the turning of the lock, the door opening. I turned away like I wasn’t interested, heard the lock click back in place.
Back in my room I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, next to the window. Billie had drawn the curtains but hadn’t noticed the window was open just a smidge. I set the radio next to me on the floor, kept the earpiece in, but turned the volume down low. In one ear, the soothing cadences of Lon Simmons calling the baseball game. In the other ear, whenever they raised their voices or moved close enough to the window, occasional scraps of Billie and Alice.
“They ruined my dress.”
“You were half naked. I ripped that flag off the wall to cover you.”
“I don’t understand. Those drinks hit me so hard. I don’t even remember how I got home.”
“Sonny drove and I walked you inside. We were lucky—Archer was asleep and your parents weren’t here.”
This was the final day of the four-game set against the Dodgers, and the Giants had lost two of the first three. It was still early in the season, but it felt like the team was already on the edge of disaster. They really needed this game to even up the series, shore up their morale and get out of L.A. with their self-respect intact. But after three innings, they were losing two to nothing.
“How did I not see it coming?”
“It’s not your fault, Billie. You need to call the police.”
“In this town? What good would that do?”
“It’s a crime! He should go to jail.”
“I never should’ve come to this backwards little town.”
If Billie decided to call the police, then I could tell. I would have to tell, wouldn’t I? I was an eyewitness, the one who could back up her story. Which could send Hank to jail instead of Vietnam. But she might be right about going to Chief Timmons. Or anyone else. Most people in Lupoyoma would never believe such a thing about Hank. The truth would sound like a lie. I wouldn’t have believed it myself.
“Does Sonny know?”
“He doesn’t know how far it went.”
“Good. Don’t tell anyone, please. I don’t want anyone else to know.”
“But—”
“Just don’t, Alice. Swear you won’t, okay?”
If Billie didn’t want anyone to know, then I couldn’t tell. Or didn’t have to tell. Which meant I wouldn’t have to answer questions or justify my actions. My inaction. But then I would have to walk around like the whole thing didn’t happen. Go to school, go to work, play baseball, grow up. Like it didn’t happen. And I would never be rid of the secret.
“Shit, what if I get pregnant?”
“Oh my god, from just one time? Don’t even say that.”
“It’s happened before, though.”
“What do you mean? Like what happened last night?”
“No, not like that, but a one-night stand, you know, and a couple months later I’m in some shady fucking doctor’s office on the east side of Cleveland. I’m not going through that again.”
Knocked up, unwed mother, child out of wedlock, bastard. Even a kid like me understood this was Scarlet Letter territory in 1970 Lupoyoma, a full-blown scandal in waiting. Socially acceptable options were limited to marriage or adoption, and even giving up a child for adoption was frowned on. A girl could disappear from school for months, rumors would fly, the girl would return, sad and self-conscious, classmates whispering in the hallway. Abortion was technically, just barely, legal in California, but that wouldn’t matter at Doc Meaney’s office. And in Lupoyoma, single motherhood required an explanation—preferably a dead husband.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, the Dodgers pounded out six runs and I could feel the game, maybe the whole season, slipping out of reach. Not technically, not mathematically, but emotionally.
The Dodgers didn’t score again, but they didn’t need to. Final score, eight-zero, leaving the Giants still mired deep in fifth place.
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.
© All Rights Reserved