If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls
FOUR
NAISSANCE
Chayne Kandzierski had read that the millennium would not begin in 2000, but in 2001. In graduate school he’d run across the concept of a Long Century, meaning a century began not at 00 or even at 01, but at whatever time the things defining it started to happen. For instance, the Long 19th century had begun with the French Revolution in 1789 according to some, and it had made Chayne wonder when centuries and millennia really did meet their close. But after this summer he was sure that the New Age began on his birthday when he awoke to find Robert Keyes standing before him, and kicked into full gear near summer’s end when Russell Lewis, the godchild of his heart, told Chayne what he had learned in the dark hot nights and days toward the end of summer the same time that Caroline Balusik’s baby was born.
Later, when he knew more, Chayne would know that the old millennium, which had started all the way at the Battle of Hastings and brought the Middle Ages, witch trials, anti-Semiticism and slavery, but not the Second Coming of Christ, ended the night Jill Barnard stood on a stage and told her truth, but her truth began weeks earlier, when the summer was at its hottest and Jill was at her most lonely.
“Is it always this hot during summer?” Leon Dixon asked.
They were inside his ‘78 Impala, parked under a large elm tree whose roots had erupted from the sidewalk on Colum Street.
“Have you lived here your entire life?” Jill Barnard asked.
“Yep. Except for a year in Nevada.”
“Well, then don’t be stupid. It’s always hot here.”
Jill felt she’d been a little rude, and then laughed because she was drunk.
“You said you wanted to dance with me.”
She was a pretty girl, on the tall side with reddish tea colored hair and brown eyes in an ivory face.
“I said I wanted to dance with you, but the music was shitty at that wedding.”
“You were the DJ.”
She hadn’t meant to sneer at him. She saw by the look on his face she was. Oh, well.
“Let’s dance now.”
“This is where you wanna dance?”
“Yeah,” said Leon, enthusiastically. “And by the way—I didn’t choose the music I played. Not like real DJ’s. If I could get the fuck out of this town I’d be a real DJ.”
He turned on the radio in the Impala and blasted it up, but Jill turned it down and shushed him.
“You’ll wake the whole neighborhood! You’ll wake my mother.”
The radio was playing low now.
“Sorry. This is good enough. For talking, and dancing.”
“Where are we going to dance?”
“You know,” said Leon Dixon. “From the moment I saw you, I knew you were special. I knew you were it. Now I know for sure.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I feel like I do,” he began, running his hands over her pantyhose, trying to find an entry.
“Oh, stop that,” she slapped his hand and laughed. For a moment it flashed into Leon’s mind that Jill was simple. But Jill wasn’t being simple. She was making a simpleton out of him.
“This has been such a special night,” Leon insisted. A pick up truck sped down Colum Street. Its taillights flashed red as it made a left turn disappearing up Moringham. The crickets were making a louder chirping, a wall of chirrups almost, and the air smelled like the pods fallen from the tree that were thick and green about the car.
“Hasn’t it been special?” he whispered to Jill.
“It’s been alright,” she shrugged, reluctantly.
Leon leaned into her and whispered. “It would be the perfect night if you let me fuck you.”
Jill burst out laughing.. She was ashamed for shaming him, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Right here?” she covered her mouth and pointed to the interior of the car. “Now?”
Undaunted, Leon Dixon said, “Yes.”
“No,” Jill replied. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive. Jill was almost drunk enough to say yes. He was tall enough and he had high cheek bones and what her brother would call an aquiline nose, and she remembered that in the light he had green eyes and thick black hair. When she was downing champagnes at Tara’s wedding and feeling sorry for herself and a little bit horny, she’d allowed herself to fantasize, which had ended up in letting Leon drive her home. The reality was sitting in a rented tux in a ‘78 Impala promising five minutes of fuck, and she wasn’t really as impressed as she thought she should have been. If she had this much discernment when she was two sheets to the wind, Jill wondered, how would she feel about this guy if she was totally sober?
“Well,” Leon said, at last, “Could I hold your hand?”
Jill shrugged and said, “Sure. What the fuck?”
Leon Dixon’s hand was clammy. They sat together in a Ford under a shedding elm on a hot summer night on the 7800 block of Colum Street in Geschichte Falls, Michigan.
And I don’t want the world to see me
cause I don’t think that they’d understand
when everything seems to be broken
I just want you to know who I am...
Finally Leon spoke over the radio.
“Jill?”
“Yes?” she sounded a little wearied.
“Would you jack me off?”
And she gave him her hand, and he undid his zipper and she reached for his penis. It was warm and clammy all at once, remarkably hard, but throbbing. And it was small—at least smaller than what she thought it should be. She began, non committally, to stroke it, to let Leon make use of her hand. He shifted in the seat beside her, and after a while said:
“You’re not getting it right.”
“It’s not like I do this shit ev’ryday.”
“Com’on, just try,” he sounded anxious. She took pity on him. She actually did try her best. But Jill wasn’t lying. She didn’t do this shit everyday.
“Hold on,” Leon said in a slightly strangled voice.
“Jake Waltman said you had a tight pussy and liked to fuck.”
“He what? I… never.”
Leon worked open his trousers, brought his dick out some more, and then spat on his palms. He was too involved in himself to realize that Jake Waltman’s words were like a slap. She stung from the lie. And if she thought about it, this wasn’t the first time a man had lied about her, or another one had revealed the lie just to spite her.
She watched Leon massage himself and she watched his penis grow, and she watched the purple head enlarge, and then she watched his face, his handsome face—he was handsome—grow earnest, serious, like he was praying, and then suddenly contort. He gave a little strangled cry. Jill’s eyes flew open, and she watched semen shoot out over the steering wheel and the dashboard. As Leon groaned and leaned forward like someone gut punched, Jill noted, with a pang of despair, that this was actually the best date she’d had in a year.
“There’re—” Leon started over again. “There’re wet naps in the glove compartment.”
He gestured to it.
Jill thought of saying something snide, but refrained, and brought out three. One for Leon, one for his steering wheel and speedometer, and one for her own left hand.
“Do you think you need another one?” Jill asked.
“For what?”
“For your speedometer? For the wheel? Is that going to cover everything? I mean...” Jill tried to find a good way to put it, “you had... quite a lot to get out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen than much before.”
Leon almost beamed. It was the closest thing to a comment on his sexual prowess he was going to get tonight. It had been a good night. He’d taken a girl home. He’d gotten some in his car. The specifics did not matter.
“I’d better go,” Jill said at last.
“Can I call you?”
“You can. But you won’t.”
“Yes I will.”
“No,” said Jill. “You won’t.”
“Give me your number. Write it down.”
Leon fumbled for a pen and a scrap of paper. Jill rattled off her number. Leon made a great show of writing it down and then, prominently, stuck it in the rearview mirror.
“See,” he said, as if this proved something.
“When I call can I say dirty things?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“I’ll leave them on the answering machine. I’ll whisper them when the phone gets picked up. Do you have your own private line?”
“No.”
“Does that mean your mother’ll hear me?”
“Probably. And my brother too. Good night.”
She got out of the car, maneuvered past the tree and went up the crooked walk of buckling and broken sidewalk into the dingy little white house. She noticed that the son of a bitch hadn’t even bothered to wait until she’d got into the house safely. He just drove off. His taillights were already disappearing around the two story clapboard on the corner of Moringham.
There was one light on in the corner of the sparsely appointed living room. Cody was sitting on the old brown and gold plaid couch, reading.
“How was the wedding?” he asked his sister.
“I hate my life,” said Jill Barnard.
That had been nearly a month ago, right before she’d decided not to go to Venetian Fest. She hadn’t been out with a man since.
“So whaddo you think of her?” Ralph Balusik asked Russell, taking a sip from his shake.
“I like her,” Russell said, shrugging. They were in the new Value Burger on Elmhurst Street.
“That’s it?” Ralph put down the shake. “That’s all you can say?”
“Whaddo you want me to say? She’s great. Vanessa’s really cool. Alright? In fact,” Russell added, sitting back and taking a swig from his Coke, “so cool I was surprised she’d go for someone like you.”
Instead of reaching across the booth to slug him in the arm, Ralph sat back and said, “I know.”
“Hunh?”
Ralph smiled.
“I know, Russell. Van seems a little high class. I don’t know what she sees in someone like me.”
“Well,” Russell played the line between funny and honest, “you are on the football team—even if you don’t get that much play, and it is summer. And you’re really not bad looking—”
“You don’t think so?” Ralph looked pleased.
“No,” Russell shook his head. He had always assumed that with the exception of a few ugly ducklings in the sophomore-graduating to junior class at Our Lady of Mercy, everyone was more attractive than himself, and that they didn’t have to be told.
“And you’re nice,” Russell went on. “Once you let people see that.”
Ralph grinned and shrugged, sucked noisily from his shake, then looked disconcerted at the noise.
“Sometimes,” Russell said as a station wagon sped down Elmhurst, “do you ever pull away and watch yourself doing stuff and wonder—what the hell am I doing?”
“That’s you Russell. The rest of the world isn’t that deep.”
“I don’t think it’s deep, just that...”
“Just what?” Ralph sat up straight and raised an eyebrow, all ears now.
“Just that I never actually pictured myself sitting in Value Burger, or anywhere else eating lunch with you.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Russell eyed him.
“Aw, com’on, now Russ. I know I gave you a hard time in the past, but—”
“Ralph, all through freshman year you spit at me to get my attention—”
“I was a kid.”
“You did it this year too.”
“I’m growing up now.”
“And then you’d call me a faggot.”
Ralph shut up.
“You wrote in my yearbook, Russell Lewis—you’re a fag. And I’m not trying to hold it against you. I’m just saying this is a weird turn of events. You and Jason, doing all the mean shit you two did. The way he would look at me.”
“Well, yeah,” Ralph looked suddenly not so at ease. “Yeah, that was… That was an asshole thing to do. And I’m sorry. I really am.”
“And Jason.”
“You know he didn’t mean it. You….”
“What?” Russell looked at him.
“Whaddo you think of Jason?”
“Jason Lorry?” Russell said unnecessarily, shrugging. “I dunno. He’s alright. He’s not a jerk anymore. He says hi in the hallways.”
Russell didn’t really want to think about Jason Lorry.
“Well, he likes you,” Ralph said. “He always wants to know if you want to hang out with us.”
“That would be… weird.”
“Com’on, Russ.”
“He treated me like shit. Called me a fag, grabbed my ass. Made me feel…. Look, I’m not against him, it’s just, I’m not social and everything, and… All last year was a weird thing. The Virgin Mary stunt, getting suspended. Gilead, the party, people pretending to like me... You! It’s all weird,” Russell shook his head.
Ralph laughed. He looked, for a moment, very knowing. There was that old insolence in his hazel eyes.
“You’re really smart, Russell Lewis, but sometimes you’re dense as fuck.”
Now it was Russell’s turn to look incredulous.
“For a guy you don’t know anything about guys,” Ralph went on. “That’s how guys are. Nobody pretends to like you. People like you. You know I like you. You’re my friend.”
“When did you start to like me?” Russell asked. “Was it the party? After the police raided it and me and Gil—”
Ralph, looking very older brotherly, put up an exasperated hand. “Russell, I always liked you. I was just fucking around. Getting your attention I guess.”
“Did it ever occur to you to just say hello—like a natural human being?”
Ralph laughed and then said, “No. But that might be my resolution for junior year. Act human. It’ll be the second thing I put in my Rolodex.”
There was silence and then, baited, Russell said, “Well, what’ll the first thing be?”
Ralph smiled at his friend, sucked the last of the shake out of the cup and said, “Get a Rolodex.”