I’ve been lucky in my life to know a few people who really believed in something. My weird Aunt Amy May really believed in Jesus. My jailbird Uncle Shirley really believed in growing marijuana. My best friend, Charlene, really believed in smoking marijuana. My first boss in the radio business, William, really believed in the saving power of pornography, and my second boss in the radio business, Steve Thomas, really believed in disco. Me, I’ve never really believed in much of anything, except that a job in an air conditioned building is better than one somewhere else.
I’ll start this story at my high school graduation, when I didn’t know what the heck I wanted to do with my life, just had, as I’ve said, a religious fervor to find a job in the air conditioning.
The night before our high school graduation Charlene called me up to ask what I wanted for a graduation present.
“Like always, Charlene. I wanna make love with you,” I said.
“Not too damn likely,” Charlene said, “but I’ll get ya stoned”.
“OK, why don’t you show us about five,” I said.
So the next day, the big graduation day, Charlene drove up as my weird Aunt Amy May, who believed in photography as well as Jesus, had me out in front of her camera. She took my picture by the oak tree, my picture by my old man by the oak tree, my picture by my mom by the oak tree. Then we moved over by the persimmon tree, and on and on.
When Charlene got out of the car in her graduation get up, weird Aunt Amy May wanted to take her picture too, which I figured Charlene won’t stand till for, but she was on good behavior, maybe because of the funny hats, or just absurdity in general, so my weird aunt took another round of pictures with Charlene.
As we edged toward Charlene’s car, which she also photographed, weird Aunt Amy May yelled, “Jesus bless ya,” and “Girl, you got the prettiest red hair,” to Charlene as she opened the car door, then yelled, “Tim, you got you a pretty girlfriend!” as I slammed my door.
“Yeah, right,” I yelled to my weird aunt. “Get me stoned, please,” I said to Charlene under my breath as Charlene put the car into reverse and I slapped on my shades. Charlene spun the Pinto’s wheels in the gravel as I looked through the eight track case for the Black Sabbath IV tape. It broke so we took the guts out and used it to stash rolled joints.
“You got the damnedest relatives,” Charlene said. “You oughta start a circus.”
I could count on Charlene–she had six good sized ones already rolled. We had the grass, a case of Miller Ponies, and an Allman Brothers tape in. We were very set up.
All the way through high school Charlene and I tried to be hippies. The hippie thing was done for, even in the midwest, by 1976 but since nobody had come up with anything more interesting to be–we hadn’t even heard of the Sex Pistol then–we made do. We tried to dress like James Dean would have, if he’d been alive.
Actually, Charlene came closest to being a hippie, talking about politics and philosophy and such. I just had long hair and smoked dope. Besides, Charlene had short hair, worse than a guy having long hair. That’s one reason I liked Charlene. She was stranger than I was.
Now my parents live seven miles from Brougham, where Charlene and I went to high school. Charlene lived in Brougham. Which made her a city kid. I was a country kid.
It’s all gravel roads to town from the parents’ house and Charlene’s Pinto raised quite a dust, but that was OR since we had the windows rolled up to keep the smoke in anyway. I hit the joint as hard as I could, then passed it to Charlene. What ya wanna do? I said, trying to talk without exhaling.
“Let’s shoot some pool.”
“Sure.”
“Think Tully’ll freak out, seein’ us like this?” Charlene said, passing the joint back.
“Maybe.” I took another deep hit.
Charlene was the love of my life. We all have one, if we’re lucky enough–that ideal person we think is everything we’re not. Charlene’s been my great love since I met her in eighth grade. She looked so tough yet so vulnerable the day she showed up new in class, jangling bracelets on both wrists, patched jeans and no bra.
I used to think we’d get married, being together so long, but somewhere back there, I can’t really remember when exactly, Charlene decided she liked girls, which is a little hard to argue about. I’ve always liked being with her though, and for several years I thought she’d come around. It wasn’t because I couldn’t have her that I kept thinking of Charlene as the most beautiful woman who ever lived. No, she was a sculptor’s wet dream–round and full. A woman’s woman. The little hairs on her arms said woman. She dripped woman. Even when she was 14, that first time I ever saw her, she was perfect, and she got better every day.
“Hey, roach this,” Charlene said.
I took the roach, slapped it in my mouth, and swallowed it with a gulp of beer. “How ’bout another?” I said, whipping out the Black Sabbath case again.
It was spring in the country and the fields still lay fallow–just a few weeds here and there. The country is great, flying by, when you’re stoned. And the gravel roads, they’re like driving over a bunch of marbles. All that space, all those abandoned houses where people used to live. All those graveyards nobody goes to anymore. Everything is really dead in the country–but everything is really alive. The most alive of anywhere because the country eats up all the dead and comes up green. The country just doesn’t give a damn.
The country is so tough, it even gives the towns a complex. Brougham is just a heap of dingy bricks–the tallest building is two stories–sinking into the hills like people in the movies go down in quicksand.
As we cruised into town I slid down in the seat as Charlene cranked up the stereo. We rolled down the windows and slipped our elbows out, screaming along to the tape. We knew all the words.
Tully’s Pool Hall sat on the corner of two state roads–the reason the town existed, and the railroad ran through the middle of the X they made. The pool hall really did belong to Tully, a squat guy built like two boxes–big thick box body, little square shaved box head. He always sucked at a big unlit cigar.
Tully had five tables, two across the front, three crammed down the center. He had a chair, a makeshift kitchen congregated around the side door, and a cash register. Each table had a plywood topped stand-up table by it, for snacks and an ashtray. People in the southern part of Illinois don’t expect luxury. If they wanted things fancy, like in Chicago, they’d move. Most of my relatives, and I have a lot of them, didn’t have running water in those days and most of them just had electricity because they liked TV.
By the front window sat a jukebox and cigarette machine. The ceiling, covered in spider-webbed tin pressed into vine designs, arched twenty feet, with three huge fans hanging down on long pipes which muffled the smoke and humidity.
I think Charlene liked it because Tully either accepted she was out of the ordinary, and went with it, or really didn’t know she was a girl. Charlene always wore big flannel shirts and jeans anyway, so maybe Tully didn’t know. Whichever, he always talked to us like we were a couple of guys.
“Hey, Tully,” Charlene said as we came in, “rack.”
“You kids graduatin’, huh?” he said around his cigar. He strode over and worked intently at racking the balls tight.
“Yeah,” I said, my Marlboro stuck to my lip. “Ya like the getup?” We had them unzipped, and I liked the way the robe fluffed out like a cape.
“Ya look like a coupla mummers on parade, he croaked, picking up the quarter I laid down and limping back behind his cash register. Back in those days I had no idea what a mummer was, I hadn’t been around like Tully, but I assumed mummers had to be something cool and weird. Something like Alice Cooper.
Charlene broke. The four rolled in. “Little ones!” said Charlene, busying herself lighting a cigarette. Then she proceeded to make three more.
“Damn!” I stomped.
“Hey, watch your language!” Tully yelled.
Charlene banked the seven.
“Dammit!” I said.
“Yeah, I’m feelin’ lucky, man. Get a few beers in me. Smoke a joint. . .”
“Watch your language!” Tully yelled.
“Graduate…” continued Charlene. “Hell, I’m on top of the world, man. I’m outta this damn hick dump.” Charlene always talked about getting out.
I didn’t think thing about it.
Charlene missed on the eight. I made the twelve and then the ten but the cue ball rolled in after it. “Damn!” I said.
“Watch your language!” Tully yelled.
“Hey, man,” Charlene said, “you got some cash?–eight ball corner–I got the damn munchies. Let’s get us one of them Tombstone pizzas, huh?”
The eight ball rolled in.
“Damn!” I said. “Yeah, I got a five to party on…and some quarters. Sure.” I’d spent the weekend before cutting shoats and had a bit of money.
“Hey, Tully, rack.” said Charlene. “And how ’bout one of them Tombstone pizzas–the hamburger one–and some corn chips?”
It being too early in the day for the serious players, we were the only ones in the joint. No one else came in, since Brougham gossips maintained Tully’s had an infestation of lice, a rumor Charlene thought the Bible thumpers had started.
“You ain’t goin’ to that Tully’s, are ya,” my mom often asked as I left for the evening. “They got lice in there and you shore don’t want them lice in that long hair of yourin.”
Charlene broke and ran the table.
“Damn!” I stomped, throwing a quarter on the table.
“Rack!” called Charlene.
“Do you wanna rack or do you wanna pizza, anyway,” Tully said, walking over.
Charlene and I both chalked our sticks as Tully started on the rack, but a timer clinked and he went back to get the pizza. Out he came with a steaming pizza and two bags of corn chips.
“Don’t ya want nothin’ to drink?” Tully said.
“Uh, uh,” said Charlene. “We’ll just go out and visit my car, if ya know what I mean.
Tully smiled. He always smelled like whiskey. Brougham is in a dry county, another Bible thumper plot according to Charlene, but a lot of people make trips over to Platt, where the Catholics live, and buy alcohol. That’s where our dealer, Gramma, lives too.
Charlene and I leaned against the wall eating pizza. “How ’bout some music? I said, licking my fingers and walking toward the jukebox. I put in a quarter and flipped through to find “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35″, one of those strange anachronisms the old Wurlitzer held.
“You wanna hear somethin’?” I called.
“Uh, yeah, ‘Dream On.’”
I punched that in and “China Grove”.
“I wonder what it would be like graduatin’ on acid,” Charlene said, munching corn chips as Dylan started in, “They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to be so good.”
“Whoa. Far out!” I said. “I don’t think I could maintain, though, man.”
“Yeah, me neither. That place is weird enough already.”
We chewed awhile, listening to the music.
“Hey, man,” Charlene said, suddenly serious, “did they really screw you out of that graduation speech?”
“I dunno. Stephanie told me ole man Sheply was afraid to let me give a speech. Afraid of what I’d say. Or maybe it was just because I took dummy English classes and ag. I don’t know.”
“Man, we could have written a brilliant damn speech. Had the crowd up and ready to march!”
“Dream on, Charlene. All I could have said anyway was how it’s cool to graduate in the Bicentennial Year of the good ole US of A. Maybe quoted somethin’ from Dylan, ‘get out of the new one if’n you cain’t lend a hand,’ you know. Stuff like that. Nothin’ major. They always read the speeches to see what’s in ‘em. You can’t talk about legalizin’ weed and stuff like that.”
We finished the pizza down to the burned crusts, then ripped the corn chip bags open and licked out the crumbs.
“Well, it’s a dirty damn deal. Censorship. That’s what it is. If they hadn’t flunked me in home ec because I made those brownies, I would have had the grades, and I would have demanded my time,” Charlene said.
“I’m thirsty, let’s ride around a while, hey?” I said, laying my five on the pool table.
“Hey!” Tully yelled as we walked out, “what you kids gonna do to celebrate graduatin’?”
“Well, we’re doin’ it,” Charlene said. “Get messed up.”
“Pussies. You guys are pussies. But, hey, I kinda thought you two would be in here. Have a little present on me, huh?”
As I say, Tully maybe didn’t know Charlene was a girl. Anyway, Tully walked back to his cash register and picked up two cans of spray paint. He handed one to each of us.
“I got this special for you guys. Why don’t you go paint the damn water tower? When somebody puts a big thing up in the air, they’re just beggin’ to get it messed with. Have at it.”
“Thanks, man,” Charlene said, pulling the door closed.
-David Breeden
