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Eighteen
Channy
Moving to a new state, meeting a
boy, shacking up. Lots of people do these things, they’re downright ordinary –
but I couldn’t believe they had happened to me,
and in such a short time. I was also lost in the particulars of the boy – the
boy who gloried in slaying imaginary beings, who obsessed over military
equipment, who brought me flowers at the least-expected moments and made love
more tenderly than I knew a boy could. I pictured myself driving a tractor
through the long valley of Harvey – this field with soy beans, that with weeds,
tulips followed by brambles, wheat, hard-baked pan. Were all men such
checkerboards?
His
first weekend away came at the end of August. I woke to a soldier in my
doorway, dressed in jungle fatigues. It repelled me; it excited me. I wanted to
run in claustrophobic terror. I wanted to adopt a foreign accent and proceed
directly to role-playing. Oh, American soldier boy. Save me from the Cossacks!
He
grinned rather loopily. “I’m off to the front, baby. Tonight we take Tacoma.”
“You
look handsome.”
“I
feel like I’m going to a freakin’ costume party.”
“You’ll
be fine.” I rolled out of bed and slipped my arms around his waist. “One thing,
though. That smartass sense of humor that I so absolutely adore?”
“Yes?”
“You
might want to suppress that.”
“Yes,
ma’am.” He gave me a kiss, his breath strong with mouthwash. I would have
preferred more Harvey, less Listerine.
“Well!
I’m running late. Have a good weekend, darlin’. I’ve instructed the third
division to keep an eye on the place.”
He
was off before I could ask. I flopped back to bed for a much-deserved sleep-in.
At noon, I drifted into the living room to find two hundred green plastic army
men lined up on the mantelpiece.
It was a
beautiful, beautiful day. The cap of Rainier poked over the ridge like a
monster bicuspid. I felt small and lonely – and what was that about? Had I not
left Alaska precisely to be alone? Independent? Reckless? I employed this
thought to whip myself into action, scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom till
they shone, mopping the hardwood floors, beating the rugs, and generally
enjoying the free space left by the absence of one sprawling male anatomy.
Still, it was a small house, and I
didn’t kill half the time that I needed to, so I crossed the street to the
bison field, trying for the twenty-third time to tempt them with wads of
freshly picked grass. Not that grass was hard to come by, but I was hoping that
presentation would count for something. Bessie and Ben moved not an inch from
the exact geographical center of the field, and considering the sad history of
American-bison relations, I could not blame them.
I was wandering in the direction of
the strip mall when I noticed a man shuttling between Kerby’s Café and a
burgundy SUV, toting various large black objects. He had a thick shank of white
hair, and wore large, thick glasses that reminded me of Dr. Steinwitz, my
pediatrician in Anchorage.
I had a rather dim view of Kerby’s.
The patrons were a rough bunch, and they often kept Harvey and me awake,
yelling to their buddies across the parking lot. At closing time, a parade of
headlights flashed across our windows.
But I was bored, so I crossed the
parking lot to investigate.
“Hi! Whatcha loadin’ up for?”
He gave me a studied look, absolutely
nonplussed.
“Karaoke.”
“Oh! Cool.”
“Ever try it?”
“Once. At a birthday party. They
only had thirty songs, though.”
“Ha! We’ve got seventeen thousand.
All on a computer.”
“God! Are there seventeen thousand
songs in the world?”
“I still get complaints about the
ones we don’t have. You should sing tonight. We start at nine.”
“Oh, well… I’m only eighteen.”
“No problem. If you bring those mic
stands in, I’ll make you my official roadie.”
“Wow! Thanks.”
“Strictly Coca-Cola, mind you.”
His name was J.B., which I later
found out stood for James Brown. He was about the whitest-looking man I’d ever
seen, so I didn’t really see the need for the initials. (One day he met Bobby
Vinton at a party and said, “Wow! You’re Bobby Vinton.” Vinton said, “Well what’s
it like, meeting Bobby Vinton?” And J.B. said, “I don’t know. What’s it like
meeting James Brown?”)
By day, J.B. ran a computer shop,
and he took great pleasure in showing me his high-tech karaoke system. He could
hunt for a song using a keyword, then play it with a mouse-click. A window to
the left kept a running roster of singers, along with the songs they had picked
that night – and, for the regulars, every song they had ever sung. At the
bottom was a list of filler songs that came on whenever a karaoke song was
over, and he could also play canned applause – or, for the end of the night,
the Warner Brothers’ “Th-th-that’s all, folks!”
“I actually
helped design this,” said J.B. “I was in a test group for the software
developers, and they used a lot of my suggestions. That’s why I like it so
much.”
“Is he
boring you with his technobabble?”
This came
from a woman behind me, wearing big glasses just like J.B.’s. She was short and
squat, a bundle of curves with a round, pleasant face. And, evidently, a wry sense
of humor.
“He’s more
in love with that program than with me. So who are you?”
“Oh, hi.
I’m Channy.”
“She’s my
summer intern,” said J.B.
“J.B.! Is
she underage? You’re gonna get us into trouble.”
“Oh,
nonsense. I checked her in with Laura. Nothing but Shirley Temples and Roy
Rogerses.”
“Well,
okay. Why don’t you sit up here with me, then? I get bored when Mr. Man’s
making out with his computer.”
Her name
was Debbie – wife and emcee, which meant she had plenty of time to chat between
singer intros. You could tell, also, that she took a lot of pleasure in the
characters who populated the bar. There was Diana, the archetypal brassy broad,
who sang bawdy country tunes like “You Can Eat Crackers in My Bed.” And Cowboy,
who wore an old hat covered in patches and pins, and sang nothing but Lynyrd
Skynyrd, curled up in the corner with a cordless mic. A plentifully soused
blonde named Jolene took great pleasure in singing “Jolene.” And skinny, bald
Rory kept trying to do ‘70s rock anthems that were too high for him.
I was
really enjoying this – all of it. The way the songs drew instant connections
between people. The way the old guy in the beret showed his approval by yelling
“Sing that shit!” The feeling of deep history, friendships that had survived
decades, perhaps broken apart by crises and fights, but brought back together
by the same gravity that created them. And Debbie, who took her husband’s
recklessness as a license to be my foster mother for the evening.
“So what’s
the story, Channy? Everybody’s got a story.”
“I came
down from Alaska last month, and… I met a boy.”
“Oh! She
met a boy. I sure know that story.”
“It’s so…
unsettling sometimes. Actually, that’s how I ended up here tonight. He’s in the
Army National Guard, and this was his first weekend away. I was feeling pretty
isolated.”
“Well! I’m
glad you found us. Are you gonna sing something?”
“I don’t
know. I’ve never done this for real before.”
“Well.” She
gave my knee a pat. “Here’s what I tell all my beginners. Pick a song that you
know frontwards and back. The song you know best in the world. It’s very
important to have a good experience the first time out. Kinda like sex. Omigod!
Did I say that?”
The way she
put it, my choice was pretty obvious: “Beautiful Day,” my graduation song. The
only problem was staying on the melody. I kept wandering to the alto harmonies
that James had written (James who just then was headed off to meet his death in
Minnesota). But Debbie smiled at me like I’d hit one out of the park.
“That was
great!” She spoke into my ear as Rory did battle against Bowie’s “Space
Oddity.” “I like those new parts you threw in. Where’d you learn that?”
“Well, it’s
a long story.”
She patted
my knee again. “I’ve got all the time in the world, honey.”
Sunday
evening, I sat at the kitchen table with a plate of cold pork chops and
asparagus, watching the sun slanting over the bison-field in tangerine stripes.
I was interrupted by my pickup truck, dragging into the driveway with my own
soldier-boy at the wheel. He edged up the walk with a limp and gave me a weak
smile, his face smudged here and there with camo makeup. I wrapped him in a
hug.
“Hi honey.”
“Hi.”
“How was
it?”
“You
remember what you said about my smartass sense of humor?”
“Yes?”
“A hundred
pushups.”
I couldn’t
help but giggle.
“Oh! She mocks
my injuries.”
“Sorry,
darlin’. But I did tell you.”
“You did.
But a hundred pushups tends to drill the point home.”
I ran a
finger across his dirty, sweaty brow and down his cute nose.
“Poor baby.
Take a shower, and I’ll heat up this food.”
“Thanks.”
He slogged
off to the bathroom, pausing at the mantelpiece to salute the third division. I
felt bad for him, but it felt good to be needed.
Photo by MJV
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