In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [68]
The party was in a boxy apartment only blocks from my house, and the proximity made me nervous. Once in, my fears were obliterated by Jimi Hendrix riding the rails of his high-pitched guitar and the cloying smell of hashish. An American flag hung from the ceiling by its four corners, covering a single bare bulb.
I recognized some of the high school boys who often gave us rides home in their Cougars and Mustangs and Javelins with baby moon hubcaps. One presented us with a couple of Coors, then directed us to a bed where bodies were piled and writhing in various states of undress.
I sucked at the beer to quell the tremor of nervousness that threatened to rise and make me stupid. Wasn’t this exactly what I wanted? I felt the hands of the boy next to me—Jerry?—pull at the band of my jeans, then slide my shirt upward. I looked for Les and saw her pinned against the wall, holding the lit end of a cigarette between herself and whomever it was grinding his hips against hers.
Jerry had worked his fingers beneath my bra but I felt nothing. Maybe it was the beer, or the densely rolled joints that kept making their way around. I pushed away from the bed, ignoring Jerry’s slurred protests. I needed to get outside, to see the stars and get my bearings.
Les broke loose and followed me. We leaned against a hot-orange GTO and drank the rest of our beer, then the extras she had grabbed on her way out. There was little to say: we had made it to where we wanted to be, and maybe that was enough. We had only a few hours until my mother would expect us home from our baby-sitting. How could we make the best of it?
Our answer came from inside the car. A young man I recognized as a high school senior raised up from the seat and smoothed his mop of red hair. Evidently, he too had needed some air.
“Hey,” he said. “Wanna go for a ride?” We scooted into the front seat, but before we could get away half the party had decided to go along. I found myself wedged onto the lap of yet another older boy, and then we were speeding down the street, fishtailing around corners, headed for the Gut.
The Gut is what we cruised, a mile or two of Main Street that made a circular track through town. I held my breath as we hit the lights red, doing sixty past the admiring eyes of others who sat on the hoods of their own cars in the empty lots. I’d be chicken if I screamed, and truth is I never felt the urge. Nothing seemed to scare me anymore—not speeding down the road through intersections nor the nearness of death such recklessness whispered; not the church and its damnation; not the grounding or the belt raised over me for my worst sins. At least I am free, I thought as the wind whipped in through the open windows and carried the smoke away. At least I am free.
But I was not free. When Les and I staggered home that night, sodden with spilled beer and stinking, my mother was waiting. She took one look and without a word pointed her finger toward my room. We fell onto my bed, holding to each other not out of fear but because the room was spinning. I was too drunk to wonder what my mothers thoughts were as she shuffled in her robe from one room to the other, waiting for my father to come home.
I have no doubt that Les feared her father even more than I did mine, so that when my parents the next day told her she must confess or they would call and tell the tale for her, she broke into sobs. I watched her from my window after her mother had come for her, and I felt I wanted to make some rescue, make a break for it and pull her away as I flew by. But what wings did I have? I was too young to drive. I didn’t even have a bicycle. Only my legs could carry me, and looking across the expanse of