American Boy - Larry Watson [49]
“I was doing homework, okay? And she asked which subject was hardest. She never finished high school, okay? She wants to know how it works.”
“And you’re willing to fill her in... .”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I?”
“Is she like your big sister or something?”
“She’s—”
“Go ahead—she’s what?”
“She’s ... she’s nothing. Nothing more than a woman who’s living with us for a while.”
“For how long?”
Johnny gripped the top of the steering wheel, leaned forward, and rested his head against his hands. “Jesus, Matt. Do you know how you sound?”
“Suppose you tell me.”
“Like an asshole, all right? A real asshole.”
“Gee. When even your best friend won’t tell you.”
He sat back up, but kept his grip on the steering wheel and his gaze on the Red Hawk. “Yeah, well. Maybe it’s just a phase you’re going through.”
I pulled up my sleeve as if to look at my watch. She should have reappeared by now. “I wonder what’s taking her so long.”
Then Johnny asked, “Suppose I do leave you alone with her. Where the hell am I supposed to go, anyway?”
“Forget it. Sorry I asked.”
We sat in silence, staring hopefully at the entrance of the Red Hawk Bar like a pair of dogs waiting for their owner to reappear.
A Ford station wagon pulled into the lot and parked near us. Its doors opened and Johnny said, “Get down, get down!”
I slumped in my seat, prepared to drop all the way to the floor if necessary.
“Mr. Veal,” Johnny whispered. “And a woman.”
Merlyn Veal was our algebra teacher, a tall, lanky, humorless young man a few years out of college. Mr. Veal was a demanding, difficult teacher, and it was rumored that his high standards had put his job in jeopardy. The high school principal, Mr. Linton, had supposedly reprimanded Mr. Veal for the many low grades he dispensed. A teacher was free to give as many Cs as he or she wished, and Ds and Fs could be assigned to the Darrell Knapps and Barbara Turchiks without concern—after all, even if they managed to graduate, they wouldn’t be going any farther than Northland Screens—but when a teacher failed Mary Wynn, the daughter of the principal of Emerson Elementary School, or Bobby Karlstad, the son of the school board president, then that teacher had to be reined in.
I peered cautiously out the windshield. “They’re going into the Red Hawk,” I said.
“The woman with him—is she pregnant?” asked Johnny.
“Big as a house.”
Johnny sat up again. “That’s Mrs. Veal. Dad thinks she’s going to have twins.”
“Why the hell would they drive out here just to go to a bar?”
“Think about it. How often have you seen a teacher go into a bar in Willow Falls?”
“Well, I don’t sit around keeping watch at the entrances to bars.”
“You’d want to watch the back doors, anyway,” Johnny said. “Plenty of teachers won’t let themselves be seen going in or out of a bar. Mr. Gregory”—Barney Gregory coached high school football and track, and taught world history—“will only go in or out of a bar through the back door.”
“But it’s okay to be seen inside? Fucking hypocrites.” If the adolescent mind delights in any abstraction, it’s recognizing hypocrisy in the world. And even though it exists in such abundance that not seeing it would require real effort, somehow its discovery always felt like real insight to us. And then it helped justify our own rude or lawless behavior—after all, who were they to judge us?
“What the hell do you suppose Mr. and Mrs. Veal do at the Red Hawk?” Johnny asked. “Sit at the bar and chug beers all night? Play pinball?”
“Nope. With that stomach she couldn’t get close enough to the machine to work the flippers.”
“You wonder why don’t they just get a goddamn bottle and stay home.”
“Because she nags him, I bet. ‘You never take me anywhere.’ When all he wants to do is stay home and work on algebra problems.”
“She didn’t get knocked up from him doing equilateral equations.”
“I guess it’s not a hell of a lot different from Louisa wanting to come out here to buy beer.”
Johnny twisted around