Valentines Can’t Buy Her, Can They?
Who knows when the endless
walks started? Peter Paul’s endless walks. Maybe it was something as simple as
not having, really his parents not having, a car, a reliable car in the 1950s
golden age of the automobile, the American automobile fin-tail night. All such
Markin vehicles, when there was motor transportation around, and in the early
days he had memory-think of his father traipsing out of the house, lunch bucket
in hand, to catch, although usually to wait to catch, the first morning public square
bus more often than not, always looked like some Joad- mobile breaking down on
some Route 66 (really Route 6 but Route 66 spoke of great American West night
adventures) dust blow-out road waiting on some stranger’s kindnesses to send
Tom into some godforsaken Western plains town for water , battery, or some
spare part. Yes, now that he thought about it Peter thought it was just like
the Joad’s clunker except for the no family heirlooms hanging from the rafters.
Names like Studebaker, Nash
Rambler, and Plymouth (not the new, sexy tail-fin ones but some box thing that
grinded along sputtering to the high heavens and smelling of oils, grease and
always, always some foul unnamed smell that only went away when the car was
properly fixed). And see too Peter had a
no driving mother, a no car-driving mother when there was a car around. No Mom
to take him here and there, or for just goofing around looking for some new
view of the world. All such new views depended on the clunker, and his father’s
ability to keep it on the road while a carping wife and three screaming boys in
the backseat tried his patience more than any Daytona 500 driver ever had to
face.
So mishmash memories of
endless waits for early morning, not as early as his father but early, because
there was no midday transport, and late afternoon public buses filled his heart
with terror. Terror that he would always be stuck in “the projects” waiting on
some late-arriving or just barely arriving Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway
bus (always called just the bus, except when he wanted to curse, or what he
later learned was a curse and paid in penance for the knowledge, when yet again
it arrived too late for him to easily do whatever mission he was intent on
doing). At times like that Peter Paul
always thought about the time when
he (and his brother, John James) were to make their first communion at
five and six years old (Roman Catholic- style in case there are differences in
the way it is done in other kinds of heathen churches, heathen then anyway) and
clad in all white. Mom dressed as well as he ever remembered seeing her and Dad
as well, although he always seemed ill at ease in fancy dress, had to wait an
eternity for the bus and barely, just barely made it to the church. Then they waited
for an eternity, maybe more, for the bus afterwards into order to go have an
out-of-the-house breakfast to celebrate this latest Christian victory.
So he started walking,
walking that endless walk.
Peter Paul established a
certain fixed route to his walks not so much because he was enthralled by the
idea of an established route, or because he had some idea even that it was
fixed as much as “the projects”, which were located on an isolated old-time
farm land peninsula near the bay, had only one road out (one asphalt-covered
road, rutted even then, although later he would “discover” shortcuts through
marshes and reeds, some of them Mother hair-raising, if she had known). And also
because he feared, feared to perdition, that if he varied his route he would
get lost, the cops would have to bring him home, and that would be the end of
his endless walking since his walking was a motherless thing.
See there was a certain
practical necessity to Peter’s stealth as well because the mothers, even if
just raggedy projects mothers, had some kind of unexplained and unexpected
league of mothers-“projects” divisions pledge, that they would raise a hue and
cry if one of the kids seemed to be wandering too far from home. So the first
part of the journey was always sneaking out the back door down the hill to the
shoreline and around the bend about half a mile to reach that lonely road out.
Along the way out he passed seemingly endless seawall-flanked sea streets, all
granite slabs, leftovers from local granite quarries that gave the town its
granite-etched, granite-sweated, granite city nickname. From there he could see
shoreline-flashing rocks, wave broken shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn
every which way, fetid marsh smells to the right, mephitic swamps oozing mud
splat to the left as he slip-shot his way to the main road to the town center
(but what did he know then of fetid and mephitic they just stank, stank to high
heaven in low tide time).
Most days, most trips, he
didn’t care how long it took as long as he was back by lunch, or supper
depending on the time of day of his getaway. Today though, this day that forms
the basis of the story that he told Billy
Bradley one summer night after it was long over, and he had “forgotten” the
incident until something, actually someone, made him think about it this old
route was making hard the way, the path, okay, to uptown drug stores. See added
in was a little rain, the tide was up, and he was running a little late. But he
had to get his uptown business (that’s what he called it, what he always called
it with a little smirk) done because his tomorrow was an important day.
Although when he told Billy the occasion day Billy yawned and wondered why all
of a sudden that year of our lord 1956 it was urgent business.
Now the layout of Adamsville’s
uptown, like a lot of towns, was a couple of streets of retail stores, a couple
of places to eat, a few professional buildings, a movie theater (or two,
depending on the town) some government buildings and so on. In short, boring.
Except this day all Peter Paul’s focus was on the largest drugstore in town
(and for a long time the only one), Rexall’s Drugstore. Why? Don’t laugh, or laugh
just a little. Peter Paul, sweating a little from his exertions even on this
raw winter day, needed, desperately needed, to get some Valentine’s Day cards.
Yah, I know I started to yawn too.
See all of a sudden this
winter Peter Paul started noticing girls in his fifth grade class, and started
kind of find them interesting, kind of. Kind of except when they started giggling,
collectively giggling, about nothing at all or started to tease him. Tease him
not in a mean way like they did the previous year, fourth grade year, because
he came from the projects, and he didn’t have a father car, and he walked
everywhere but blush tease him be because well because, they found him kind of
interesting, kind of. And that kind of
interesting them and that kind of interesting him were on a collision course.
Like a lot of guys, young
guys and old, when girls are in play, Peter Paul went overboard. See, he
“promised” about five of these used-to-be-giggling and mean girls, that they
would be his valentine. Exclusively. He explained to me how it happened but I
don’t want you to yawn any more than you have to so I will just skip it.
Besides it sounded (and still sounds) goofy since some of the girls knew each
other and some, I think, already had “boyfriends” or what passed for boy
friends in fifth grade. Kid’s stuff, yes, kid’s stuff. So he had to hightail it
up to Rexall’s with no money really and try to work his “magic.”
And he did. Sending (or presenting
in person) each a Rexall’s Drug Store,
heist-stolen valentine, ribbon and bow valentine good night , signed,
hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, stating that if only she, five candidates
she, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head, sticks all, no
womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would only give a look his way, his look,
his newly acquired state of the minute Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea
streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet. Jesus.
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