Chapter 2

By the time I got the wet sheets off my bed and into the washing machine downstairs, and came back upstairs and got dressed and ready for school, and got all my school books and stuff together, I didn’t have time to fix myself any breakfast or to go out to the paper box and get the newspaper. The baseball scores would have to wait until I got back home after school, because the bus was gonna be coming any minute, and I had to be out at the end of the driveway in order to catch it.

I was rushing out the door when I thought I heard Mom yelling something at me from the kitchen. So I had to stop for a second, to see if she really was yelling at me, or if I was just hearing things. “Hey, Warren. Not so fast,” she yelled. I stuck my head back in the door and said, “Yes, Ma’am?” And she said, “Ain’t you forgetting something, young man?” She was standing there waving the Yearbook back and forth in front of her. Well, that’s just what I was afraid of. I was hoping I’d get out of the house before she could stop me. But no such luck. So I didn’t have any choice but to turn around and go back in and sit down at the kitchen table and try to get the daily text read before the bus showed up.

Well, I started reading it, and was skimming through it real quick, as fast as I could, when I heard the bus coming. You see, there’s this real long steep hill right before you get to our house, and you can always tell when the bus is coming because you can hear it changing gears a bunch of times, trying to make it up the hill. Then you know you’ve got less than a minute before the bus actually pulls up. So when I heard it coming, I threw the Yearbook down on the table and ran out the house and down the driveway, to meet it. I bet that made Mom mad, that I didn’t get to finish reading the daily text. But there was nothing she could do about it.

Of course, Freddie was already waiting out there, at the end of the driveway. He’d had plenty of time to eat breakfast and read the daily text. He didn’t have to strip his bed and throw his sheets into the washer, the way I did that morning. Freddie has never had to strip his bed and throw his sheets into the washer, because Freddie has never peed in his bed. Not once in his whole life. He was just standing out there at the end of the driveway with this big smile on his face, like everything in the world was just perfect for old Freddie. It looked to me like he’d borrowed Mom’s Sarcastic Face, to wear at the bus stop, just to irk the shit out of me. He didn’t say anything, or even look at me. He just stood there, smiling. Just once I wish Freddie would pee in his bed. Then maybe we’d see how much smiling he would do.

Well, I tried my best to ignore Freddie and his big stupid sarcastic smiling face. I was just hoping that his big stupid sarcastic smile didn’t mean he had picked today to start telling people that I was almost fifteen years old and still peed in the bed. That’s the last thing I needed. I could just picture him getting on the bus and standing up there in front of everybody before he took a seat, and saying something like, “Attention, attention everybody. I’ve got an announcement to make. May I have your attention, please. Warren Grubber peed in the bed again last night. I repeat, Warren Grubber peed in the bed again last night. He’s almost fifteen years old. Thank you.”

But, thank God, he didn’t do anything like that. He just went on to the back of the bus and sat down at an empty seat by himself, as usual. I took a seat up front, beside Danny. I always sit with Danny.

I said, “What’d Pete do yesterday?”

He said, “0 for five.”

I grunted.

He said, “Ryan threw a no-hitter.”

I grunted again.

That’s all either one of us said the whole way to school. I think we’re both the kind of guys that don’t like a lot of talking, first thing in the morning. I know I am. I don’t like to talk or listen to a bunch of talking for at least the first hour after I get up. What I really hate is to hear the radio or the TV blaring away when I first get up. I don’t know why that is. Maybe most kids are like that, though, because it’s amazing how quiet the school bus is on the way to school in the morning, compared to how noisy it is on the way home in the afternoon. I think that’s kinda interesting.

All in all, it takes about an hour to get to school, after the bus picks me up. I only live about eight miles from Rustburg, which is where Rustburg High School is located of course, but the bus has to stop about a million times on the way there, to pick up other kids, and then it has to go by Bocock Elementary School and drop a bunch of them off and pick up some more that are waiting there. Then it has to go to Rustburg Intermediate School and do the same thing there. And then it finally makes it to the high school. All that takes about a hour. And it takes another hour to do the same thing in the afternoon, but going in the opposite direction. It’s all really tiring. The same old trip. Every day. Stop. Go. Speed up. Slow down. Stop. Go. Speed up. Slow down. Stop. Go. Over and over. Back and forth. Every day. Twice a day. Jesus, I hate it. Especially in the afternoon, because it’s always so noisy then, what with all the stupid little kids yelling and screaming and carrying on, because they’re so glad the school day is over, and now they can go home and watch cartoons or something. It’s a wonder old Mr. Dobbs can concentrate enough on his driving to keep the bus on the road, with all that racket going on. But he’s so damn old he probably can’t hear himself fart.

Really about the only thing I like about riding the bus is that I get to talk to Danny. Not in the morning, because we don’t talk too much in the morning, like I said, but in the afternoon, on the way home. We mainly talk about baseball and music and stuff like that. Sometimes about girls. I guess you could say that Danny is my best friend, even though I’m not Danny’s best friend. I mean, I know Danny considers me his friend and all, it’s just that I know I’m not his best friend. I think most of the time when a kid has a best friend, that kid is his best friend’s best friend, too. But even though I’d have to say that Danny is my best friend, I’m pretty sure that I’m not his best friend. But that’s okay, it doesn’t bother me that I’m not his best friend, because at least he treats me like a regular normal friend, especially on the school bus, and on Sundays when we go play baseball at Miller Park, and whenever I go down to his house. I’d feel sorry for a guy that had me for a best friend, anyway. I’d make a lousy best friend. Besides, that’s really not the kind of thing that guys go around talking about. Girls might make a big deal out of who their best friends are, but guys don’t. A guy just knows it, he doesn’t go around making a big deal out of it, telling it to everybody all the time. That would be kind of faggy.

To be honest, I don’t know who Danny’s best friend is. For all I know, he doesn’t even have one. He’s got a lot of friends at school that he hangs around with, guys that are the same age as him and that are in his classes and all, and have been his teammates and played baseball with him in Little League and Pony League and stuff. I never got to play Little League or Pony League or anything, so I don’t know those guys much. I know a lot of their names and all, because a lot of them are kinda famous around school, for doing certain things, but I don’t really know them, just their names and what they’re famous for, like being good in sports, or being real cool or real smart or real popular or real whatever. It’s about the same thing as me saying I know Elvis Presley, because he’s famous. But I don’t really know him, as a friend of anything, I just know who he is. That’s the same way I know some of Danny’s friends.

When I got to school that Monday morning, the first thing I did is what I always do, which is to go to my locker and dump off a bunch of my books and stuff. Then I went and stood around with Wallace and Wendall. Me and Wallace and Wendall always stand around out in the hall in front of the library every morning before homeroom, waiting for the bell to ring. Wallace and Wendall are a couple of guys in my class, and I stand around with them and all, but it’s not like they’re my big buddies or anything. It’s not like we’re “hanging out” together. We’re just some stupid guys standing around in the stupid hall waiting for the stupid bell to ring, that’s all. I think we got started standing around together because we’re all three in the same homeroom, and me and Wendall have first period English class together. And then the three of us have the same lunch period, so we sit at the same table when we eat lunch. The fact that all three of us are geeks with nowhere else to hang out in the mornings probably has a lot to do with it, too. So we kinda stand around together in front of the library, waiting for the bell to ring.

Danny and his friends hang around in Coach Lankford’s office, which is across from the gym. Coach Lankford’s got this big office with a couple of old sofas and chairs, and a miniature basketball goal and stuff. I’ve walked by there before, in the morning on my way over to the library, and seen all those guys messing around, playing miniature basketball. I’ve thought about going on in there and standing around for a while, and trying to hang out with them. But I don’t, because those guys are all older and bigger than me, and I don’t really know any of them except for Danny, because I wasn’t in Little League or Pony League with any of them, like I said. And of course I’m not famous or popular around school and all, like a lot of those guys are. Besides, I’m sure if I went in there, one of them would just tell me to get the hell out. Danny wouldn’t, but I’m sure one of them would.

So most of the time I just stand around with Wallace and Wendall, in front of the library. There’s not much time for hanging out anyway, because homeroom starts about ten minutes after I get there in the morning. So who cares. It’s no big deal where you stand for ten minutes every morning to wait for the bell to ring.

As usual, Wallace and Wendall were standing there in the hall in front of the library, talking, so I went up there and started standing around there with them.

“Hey, what’cha say, Grubbie,” Wallace said, when he saw me coming down the hall. He says that every morning.

“Hey, what’s up, Grubworm,” Wendall said. That’s what he always says, too.

“Hey,” I said back to them. That’s what I always say.

We stood there a minute watching the other kids walking by, and then Wallace said, “Hey, I just remembered, we’re supposed to get our school annuals today. You guys getting an annual this year?”

“I am,” said Wendall. “You getting one Grubworm?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“They’re coming out today,” said Wallace, “I think we’re supposed to pick them up during lunch period. Today’s the day.” I don’t know why Wallace was telling us all this, as if we didn’t already know it. It had been announced every blasted morning during the announcements in homeroom, all last week. Every morning we have to sit in homeroom and listen to a bunch of crap over the loudspeakers, stuff like when the next stupid pep rally is gonna be, or who’s been nominated for homecoming court, or what senior just won the latest Snot Nose College Scholarship, or when the annuals are gonna be coming out.

“Today’s the day,” Wallace said again. Then he said, “Hey, Wendall, you gonna let me sign your annual, old buddy?”

“Yeah, I guess so, if you want to,” Wendall said. “You gonna let me sign yours?”

“Hell no,” Wallace said, “I don’t let faggots sign my annual.” Wallace busted out laughing real hard. He thought that was real funny. It kinda was, but Wendall didn’t think so. Wendall started punching him in the arm, and then they both started scuffling around the hall there, like they were gonna get into a big fight or something. But I knew they weren’t, because they do the same kinda kid stuff every morning, trying to see which one can put the other one down the worst, and then getting into a shoving match over it.

Jesus, those two guys are a trip. They look like they could be brothers or something, but they’re not even kin to each other. They’re both tall and skinny and have a lot of pimples, and they both wear these real thick glasses with those geeky kind of black frames, instead of the wire frames that a cool person would have. And to top it off, they both have short red hair and about a million freckles. Everybody thinks they’re twins because they look so much alike and are always hanging around with each other. But they’re not even brothers. What a pair. I don’t even know why I stand around with them in the hall every morning. I’ve only got about two things in common with them, besides the fact that I’m as big a geek as they are. One thing is, my pimples are getting to be as bad as theirs are. And another thing is, I have real short hair, too. My hair is dark brown, though, not red.

I know I’ve already told you before about how small I am. And I’ve already told you about how my pimples are starting to get bad, and how my voice has been breaking all the time lately. Now I guess I’ll tell you about the hair thing.

The hair thing all started on the first day of school in sixth grade, which was almost four years ago I guess. I went back to school that first day after being off all summer of course, and the weird thing was, almost all the guys in my class had grown their hair out kinda long, during the summer. It was almost like all the guys had gotten together on the last day of school the year before and took a vote or something, and decided to not get any haircuts over the summer. But they sure didn’t bother to tell me about it, because I was about the only guy that showed up on the first day of sixth grade with short hair. In fact, my hair was really short, because I’d just gotten a haircut the week before. That’s something that Mom always makes us do right before school starts every year, get a haircut. And back then, I didn’t get to go to a real barber that worked in a real barber shop or anything. Nope, I had to let Brother Harris, of all people, cut my hair. Mom made me let Brother Harris cut my hair. That’s because a real barber at a real barber shop would charge a couple of bucks or something, but Brother Harris would do it for free. He’s been giving free haircuts to anybody that wants one for as long as I can remember. He’s got these electric clippers like a real barber has, and if you need a haircut, you just let him know after the meeting on Thursday night or Sunday afternoon, and he’ll show up an hour or so early to the Tuesday night Book Study meeting, and he’ll bring his clippers along with him, and he’ll take you downstairs to the basement of the Kingdom Hall and give you a haircut. Freddie and a lot of the other Brothers at the Kingdom Hall still get their haircuts from Brother Harris. Of course, Freddie and all the rest of them like the way Brother Harris cuts their hair, and think its great and all. But not me. I don’t like it, because Brother Harris is not a real barber or anything, so he only knows how to cut your hair one way, which is to make these real close swipes over the top of your ears and around the back of your neck, and then leave just a little patch on top of your head, just enough to make a part and have enough left to comb over to one side. And at the very back of the top, back at the crown of your head, he always cuts it too short for it to lay down right, even after you’ve tried slicking it down with a gallon of water, so it sticks up every which way.

So there I was on the first day of school in the sixth grade wearing a Brother Harris Special that I’d just gotten the week before, with my big ears sticking out all over the place. And most of the other guys were walking around with their hair hanging down in their eyes and over their ears and down the back of their necks and everywhere.

Well, at first I didn’t think that much about it really, the fact that I had a new haircut and practically nobody else did. I mean, I guess I was used to getting my hair cut by Brother Harris, because he’d been doing it for so long. I guess all my life before that, I’d never really given much thought to what my hair looked like or what my clothes looked like or what kind of tennis shoes or blue jeans I was wearing, or anything like that. So it was no big deal. But that first day, after school, I was riding home on the school bus, and I was sitting behind these two girls that were in my class, and I could hear them talking about Timmy Drummond, who is this other guy in my class, who I really hate because he’s so stuck up and all. Timmy was one of the guys who had grown his hair out over the summer. His hair is blonde.

“Did you see Timmy Drummond today, did you see his hair?” Beth said. She was talking to Debbie, who’s this girl that I kinda had a secret crush on at the time.

“Oh, cool! Didn’t it look soooo cool? He’s soooo dreamy,” Debbie said. Then they both ooh’d and aah’d and started giggling and squealing and carrying on. And then they started bringing up the name of every other guy at school that day that had grown his hair out, and oohing and aahing about all of them, and talking about how they were soooo cute and soooo cool, too.

I sat there behind them, listening to them, all the way home. My name never got mentioned.

At supper that night, I told Mom that a lot of the guys at school had started growing their hair out long, and I had decided to grow mine out, too.

“Over my dead body,” she said. “No way. No son of mine is gonna go around with long hair, looking like a little girl.”

“But Mom, all the guys at school are doing it. And they don’t look like little girls, either. In fact, it makes you look older, when your hair’s longer. Everybody’s doing it.”

“I’m not concerned with what everybody’s doing, all I’m concerned about is what you’re doing, and one thing you’re not doing is growing your hair long. And that’s final.”

“But Mom—“

“That’s final, Warren.”

“But Mom—“

“THAT’S FINAL, YOUNG MAN. I don’t want to hear another word. Now shut up and finish your supper.”

Well, I had to shut up and finish my supper, for then. But me and Mom kept fighting about it all the time after that, whenever she thought it was time for Brother Harris to buzz my head again, which was always when my hair had finally grown out some and was just starting to look a little bit normal.

The reason Mom was like that about long hair, and still is like that, was because we were Jehovah’s Witnesses and all, and the Witnesses believe that guys with long hair and beards and stuff are displaying a rebellious attitude and are probably members of the hippie movement, and are on the path to destruction, being followers of worldly fads and all. When the Witnesses talk about following worldly fads, they mean doing stuff like wearing long hair, and big bell bottom jeans, and mini skirts, and listening to rock and roll music, and using words like “cool” and “far out” and “groovy” all the time. You go around talking like that and getting involved with any of that other worldly stuff, and the next thing you know you’re hooked on drugs and you’re out somewhere having some fornication or something. And growing your hair long is usually the first step to all that, if you ask the Witnesses.

Well, like I said, the whole hair thing started when I was in the sixth grade, which is when I first wanted to grow my hair out long. Mom wouldn’t let me, and me and her have been fighting about it all the time ever since then. Now I’m in the ninth grade, and she still makes me keep my hair short. About the only thing that’s changed since back when I was in the sixth grade is that now I get my hair cut at the Fort Avenue Barber Shop, which is located a couple of blocks up the street from the Kingdom Hall, instead of having Brother Harris cut it in the basement of the Kingdom Hall, the way Freddie and a bunch of other Brothers at the Hall still do.

What happened was, me and Mom had this really big argument one time when I was in the seventh grade, because she thought it was about time for me to get my hair cut by Brother Harris again, but as usual I didn’t think I needed a haircut, and especially not a Brother Harris haircut. I mean, it was bad enough that I had to get a haircut in the first place, but having him be the one to do the cutting just made it that much worse. So me and Mom got into it real good. We were on the way to the Tuesday night Book Study at the Kingdom Hall, me and Mom and Freddie, and we had left the house earlier than usual because Brother Harris was gonna give me and Freddie both a haircut, before the meeting started.

I was riding in the back of the car, getting madder and madder all the time, just thinking about what Brother Harris was gonna be doing to my hair when we got to the Kingdom Hall. Nobody had said a word the entire time we’d been riding, and we were over halfway there. Then out of nowhere I said, real loud, “Why do I have to let Brother Harris cut my hair all the time? He’s ruining the way I look. He makes me look stupid, the way he cuts it.”

Mom said, “Warren, the trouble with you is, you think money grows on trees. Instead of complaining all the time about everything, you should be appreciative of the fact that Brother Harris gladly volunteers to cut all the Brother’s hair, and doesn’t even charge anybody for it.”

“Charge anybody? Charge anybody? Jesus, he doesn’t charge anybody because nobody in his right mind would pay two cents for one of his stupid haircuts. If he was a real barber, he’d be dead broke, he’d go out of business in two seconds flat. He’d probably be arrested if he tried to charge somebody for one of his butcher jobs.”

I was either being real brave to say all that, or real stupid. Maybe it was because I was riding in the back seat and Mom was up front driving, so I knew she couldn’t turn around and pop me one. But I also knew that I was probably in for it, anyway, because of the sarcastic tone in my voice, and because I was kinda yelling it instead of saying it in a normal talking voice, and because I had said “Jesus” in there somewhere, and Mom really hates it when I say something like “Jesus, this” or “Jesus, that.” That’s a habit I picked up from watching TV or from school or somewhere, and I was starting to say it all the time without even noticing it. It really makes Mom mad to hear me say Jesus’s name like that. She’s always yelling at me for doing it, so I try not to slip up and say it around her or anything. But I slipped and let it out that time anyway. I don’t know what she’d do if she heard me say some of the cuss words I sometimes say. She’d probably kill me.

Well, if calling Brother Harris’s haircuts “butcher jobs” didn’t make her mad, then saying “Jesus” in a sentence the way I did was definitely gonna do it. My only hope was that she didn’t hear me say it.

“You better watch your mouth, young man. What have I told you about talking like that? And don’t you use that tone of voice with me, either. I’ve had about enough of your back-sass. Don’t think I won’t stop this car right here and now and pop you one.”

Freddie was sitting up front with Mom, during all this. He wasn’t saying anything. But I could tell he was wearing his famous little smirk, like he knew Mom was gonna really give it to me this time, and he couldn’t wait to see me get it. I knew I shoulda kept my big mouth shut, and leave it at that, but instead, I came out and said, “Well I just don’t understand it, that’s all. Why can’t I have long hair like everybody else, that’s what I want to know. What’s so wrong with it? Even Jesus had long hair, you know.” Jesus, I was just getting myself in deeper, bringing Jesus into it, instead of just shutting up.

“Jesus did not have long hair,” she yelled back at me.

“Yes he did, too. Every picture I’ve ever seen of him, he’s got real long hair. And he’s even got a beard. So if it was okay for the Virgin Mary to let Jesus have long hair, why isn’t it okay for you to let me have long hair? Where in the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures does it say that a Jehovah’s Witness kid has to have a short geeky haircut? What’s the big deal? Jesus, even Charles Taze Russell himself had long hair, and a beard, just like Jesus.” Now I had brought the Virgin Mary and Charles T. Russell into it. I was a goner for sure.

Well, I don’t have to tell you that she got plenty mad when I said all that, about as mad as I’ve ever seen her get before. She was driving along, gripping the steering wheel real hard with both hands, like she was about to rip it right out of the dash board. And she had her teeth clenched and her lips pressed together real tight, which is always a sure sign that she’s about ready to lose it. It was probably all she could do to keep from running off the road and into a tree or something. I thought for sure she was gonna stop the car and really give it to me, this time. But she didn’t. Instead of doing anything like that, she just took a slow deep breath, like she was trying to calm her self. Then in a real normal, firm voice she said, “Warren, listen to me. I’m sick and tired of hearing your mouth about this. We’ve been over this and over this, a thousand times, and I’m sick and tired of it, you hear me? You’re not gonna have long hair and that’s it. I mean it. Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Nothing you say is gonna make me change my mind on this, nothing. So the best thing for you to do right now and from now on is to shut up and quit trying my patience. Do you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good. Now, Brother Harris is gonna keep cutting your hair for as long as I say so. When you start making your own money and start paying for your own haircuts, you can go anywhere you like to get it done. But until then, you’ll just have to do what I tell you to. Because as long as I’m the one that has to pay for it, Brother Harris is gonna keep cutting it for free. That’s it. Case closed. I mean it. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“But that’s my whole point, if I was growing my hair out, it wouldn’t cost anybody anything.”

“W A R R E N! S H U T U P!”

When I got a little older, and Uncle Virgil started paying me to come down and cut his grass, well, then I had my own money to spend. So I reminded Mom about what she had said, that when I was able to pay for it, I could go to any barber I wanted to. She got plenty mad at me when I brought the issue back up again and quoted her words back to her and all, but she knew good and well that that’s exactly what she had said way back then, and she couldn’t go back on it now, without looking really bad and unreasonable. That’s the thing about Mom and all this long hair stuff, she doesn’t think she’s being unreasonable about it at all.

So that’s when I started getting my hair cut at the Fort Avenue Barber Shop, which, like I said, is just up the street from the Kingdom Hall. It’s not out of the way or anything, so Mom can’t come up with some excuse for why I can’t go in there, like it’s not convenient for her, or she doesn’t have time to make a special trip just to take me to a barber shop instead of having Brother Harris do it in the Kingdom Hall basement. Mom is good at finding excuses for why you can’t do something that she isn’t too keen on you doing in the first place, but in this case she can’t come up with any. So now when I have to get a haircut, she just drops me off at the Fort Avenue Barber Shop on the way to the Tuesday night meeting, and I get it done real quick and walk on down the street to the Kingdom Hall. And I pay for it myself. Three dollars and fifty cents.

The guy who cuts it is named Ray. He’s a real barber, not just some clown who happens to own an old pair of electric clippers. He’s an old guy with tattoos all over his arms, and he’s always got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I think he used to be in the navy. He’s nice to me, though. I tell him to take a little off the sides and a little bit off the top. He always asks me if I want a shave, too. I always say I don’t have time for a shave, maybe next time. Everybody in the shop gets a big laugh out of that, every time. There’s always the same bunch of old geezers sitting around in there, smoking and talking and looking at magazines. But they’re all nice to me, too, like Ray is. Another thing I like about this barber shop is that Ray has got a bunch of old calendars hanging around all over the walls, from every year you can think of, like 1964 and 1969 and 1972 and so on. Most of them have pictures of girls in real skimpy bathing suits, but a few of them have pictures of naked girls on them. I try to check them out real close every time I go in there, especially the naked ones. The whole time I’m sitting there in that big chair and Ray’s spinning me around, giving me a haircut, I’m checking them out. But I try to be cool about it, and not let Ray or any of them other old guys catch me with my eyes bugged out staring real hard at one of them calendars. Jesus, if Mom ever went in there and saw all that stuff, she’d really have a fit, and not ever let me go back in there. And then she’d make sure that Brother Harris cut my hair for the rest of my life. But she’s never been in there. She always just drops me off on the way to the Kingdom Hall, and goes on, like I said.

Mom still makes me have Ray cut my hair pretty short, as always, but at least I don’t have to look like a total retard, the way I did when Brother Harris was still cutting it. Of course, Mom is never satisfied with the way Ray does it, and she always says that I didn’t get enough cut off this time, and that it’s still too long, and that she’s gonna make me go back to Brother Harris, if I don’t come back next time with it looking like she thinks it ought to look. She’ll say something like, “You better tell that barber of yours that I said to cut it shorter next time, or when we get back home I’m gonna take out my scissors and cut it myself. And believe me, mister, I know you don’t want that to happen. ‘Cause I promise you, you’ll be wishing Brother Harris was still cutting it, if I ever have to take a pair of scissors to your head. You hear me?” She says that every time Ray cuts it.

So anyway, I was standing there in the hall waiting for the homeroom bell to ring, watching Wallace and Wendall going at each other, like they do every morning. That’s about all you can do, stand out of the way while they’re going through their morning ritual of trying to kill each other. That’s the thing with them two, they’re always insulting each other and pushing each other around and punching each other, and scuffling and carrying on. It’s enough to make you think they’re bitter enemies against each other or something, but really it’s just a bunch of playing around. They’re best friends, really.

I was watching Wallace and Wendall do their usual thing, like I said, and I was standing there facing the lockers that are against the wall, trying to keep out of the way of them two pushing each other back and forth. And out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that some other kids had come down the hall, and were about to pass behind me. Then all of a sudden, I felt somebody give me a big shove from behind, kinda like they were trying to brush me off to one side, like maybe you’d do if you were in a hurry or something, and you had to get by somebody real quick, somebody that was blocking your way. The thing was, I wasn’t blocking the hallway, where I was standing. There was lots of room to pass behind me. But I felt this big push, like I said, and I fell over towards the row of lockers against the wall. Somehow I managed to catch myself before my face crashed into them or anything. It all happened so quick, I didn’t know what was going on. I looked back over my shoulder at who it was that had just passed behind me, and then I realized what was going on. I saw Lamar Jackson going in the other direction. He turned and scowled at me, and kept on going.

Jesus, now I gotta tell you about Lamar Jackson.

Okay. Well, Lamar Jackson is this black guy that’s in the same class as me, which is the Class of ‘78. That’s the year I’m supposed to graduate from high school, 1978. I’ve known Lamar since the sixth grade, which was the first time I was ever around him. He was in my sixth grade and seventh grade classes, back at Rustburg Intermediate School. That was back when we only had one teacher for the whole day, so I was around him a lot back then. And back then he was always pretty quiet, maybe because he was a small guy, too, like me. He’s the shortest black guy in the Class of ‘78. But he’s still taller than me. I’m the smallest white guy in the Class of ‘78. The main difference is he’s short and kinda chubby, while I’m short and skinny.

Lamar was always an okay guy back when we were in the sixth and seventh grades together. We weren’t big buddies or anything, but we got along alright. At least he never tried to bother me or give me a hard time, that I can remember, anyway, and I’d definitely remember it if he had. He never even made fun of my name or called me Grubbie or Grubworm or Worm, the way most of the other kids were always doing. He was just a quiet kid. Like me.

Then, during the summer after the seventh grade, Lamar and his mom started coming to the Kingdom Hall. You see, his mom’s aunt is Sister Johnson, and I guess Sister Johnson was having a Home Bible Study with Lamar’s mom, and she must have been interested enough in the Truth to come to the Kingdom Hall and check it out and all. So him and his mom came to a bunch of the meetings that summer. I’d see him at the meetings, and I’d kinda say hello and all, if I walked by him, or if he walked by me, and he’d kinda say hello. But he’d never come up and try to talk to me or anything. And he acted like he didn’t want me coming up to him, either, so I never did. He mainly acted like he didn’t want to be there. Which was the same way I felt, too, of course. I didn’t want to be there, either. But I had to be there, and I had to pretend that I liked being there, whether I liked it or not, because we were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I’d been going to the meetings all my life, and I was expected to be a good little Witness boy and all.

Right before school started that fall, which was the beginning of the eighth grade, Lamar and his mom stopped coming to the Kingdom Hall, for some reason. Maybe Lamar’s mom lost interest or something, or decided she didn’t want to become a Jehovah’s Witness after all. Or maybe his dad made them stop coming, who knows. It’s not all that unusual, really, that you see someone coming to the Kingdom Hall a few times, and then you don’t see them coming anymore. So I don’t remember thinking anything of it, when I didn’t see Lamar and his mom around any more. If I was thinking anything, it was probably something like how lucky Lamar was for not having to come to any more meetings, and wishing I could be that lucky. But I don’t remember thinking that or anything else.

Then the eighth grade started, and that meant a lot of things would be different than they were in the seventh grade. You see, once you get to the eighth grade, you move up to Rustburg High School, even though you’re not technically considered a high school kid yet. You’re not officially in high school until you become a ninth grader, even though by then you’ve already been at the high school for a year. And eighth graders don’t have a special name, like freshman or sophomore or junior or senior, the way everybody else does. Eighth graders are just called eighth graders. It’s kinda stupid and it doesn’t make much sense, really, but that’s the way it is. What it all boils down to is, there’s more room at the high school than at the intermediate school, so they send the eighth graders up there, but they don’t let you call yourself a high school kid yet, even though you’re at the high school. But the way I see it, you may as well call yourself a high school kid, because you’re going to the high school, after all, and you’re doing all the same stuff that high school kids do. You have six different teachers, so you’re all the time changing classes, like everybody else there. And you have a different teacher for each subject you’re taking, instead of the same teacher trying to teach you everything all day. And each class is full of different kids, so you’re not stuck with being around the same bunch of kids in the same classroom, either.

Anyway, I started going to Rustburg High School in the eighth grade, and every day I was changing classes all the time, and having different teachers for everything, and having different kids in all my classes, like everybody else there. And I liked everything about the eighth grade, everything except having Lamar Jackson in a couple of my classes. Because that was the year Lamar really started being a different guy from what he was in sixth and seventh grades. I mean really different.

Like, there was a big difference in the way he looked and acted. He grew a big afro, for instance, and started wearing the kind of clothes you see them wearing on Soul Train or something, like big platform shoes and stuff. And he started strutting around all over school giving the Black Power sign to all the other black kids. And he had one of those big thick pick-combs stuck in the side of his head, the kind of comb that black people use on their afros. The thing about those combs is, most black guys don’t carry them in their back pockets, the way most white guys carry their combs. Black guys keep them stuck right up there in the side of their heads, where they are the handiest, I guess. And if you get into a fight with a black guy, he’ll pull his comb off the top of his head and pop you with it. I’ve seen them do it more than once.

His attitude about white people was a whole lot different than before, too. For instance, he was in my history class that year, and every chance he got, he would start going off about the Black Power movement, and how all white people are prejudiced against black people, and how the whites have always put them down and took advantage of them, and how someday the blacks were gonna rise up take over and pay us all back, because that’s what we deserved. Jesus, it was really bad when we got to studying the Civil War and all. To hear Lamar tell it, all us white kids in the class were somehow responsible for slavery and all the stuff that went on before the Civil War, even though it had happened a thousand years before we were ever born. It was still our fault anyway.

Having to listen to stuff like that from Lamar in History class was bad enough, but the worst thing, as far as I was concerned, was what was going on in my gym class. You see, Lamar was in my gym class that year, too, and for some reason he started picking on me all the time in gym class. It seemed like no matter what the class was doing, he was all the time trying to push me around. We could be outside on the field playing touch football, or we could be inside the gym playing basketball or something. It didn’t matter. Anytime he got the chance to run over top of me or bump into me real hard or knock me down, without it looking to the coach that he was doing it on purpose or anything, he took it. And every time he’d do something like that, run into me or push me down or something, he’d just give me one of his mean looks, as if to say, “What’choo gonna do ‘bout it, Witness boy?”

The first time it happened was the first of week of school that year. Our gym class was outside playing touch football, and I was one of the wide receivers for my side, because I can run pretty fast and I can catch the football pretty good and all. Lamar was on the other side. So I went out for a pass on this one play, and the quarterback threw it out to me, and I caught it. I had to kinda jump up to make the catch, and just as I came back down, somebody came up from behind me, but instead of touching me like they were supposed to, because we were playing touch football, they clothes-lined me. To tell you the truth, it about knocked the hell out of me. I hit the ground real hard, and I must have said something like, “Boy, oh, boy.” I didn’t drop the football, though.

The next thing I knew, Lamar Jackson was standing over me, looking down at me with his fists all balled up, and he was yelling, “Who you calling boy? Who you calling boy?”

I was still trying to figure out where I was, and he kept standing there, yelling at me.

Finally, I looked up at him and said, “What?”

And he said, “Who you calling boy, boy? I ain’t your boy.”

Somehow, I got to my feet and walked away from him, back to our huddle. A couple of plays later, the same thing happened again. I caught another pass and Lamar creamed me from behind again. This time when I was getting up, he said, “You’re my boy, now, boy.”

Then the bell rang and everybody had to go back to the locker room and change out of their gym clothes and go on to their next class. I was glad of that. I didn’t think I could survive another pop from Lamar that day. But the next day and the next day and the next day went about the same way. Lamar was all the time finding a way to run me over, like I said, without getting caught by the coach. And it went on just like that for the next two years, because Lamar was in my gym class this year, too.

I’ve noticed something about Lamar, though, since I’ve had to suffer through being in the same gym class with him for the last two years. And that is, when you get right down to it, he’s not really very good at sports, the way most black guys are. It ain’t just because he’s small either, because I’m smaller than he is, but I’m still pretty good at most sports, even the ones that I hate, like football and basketball. I mean, I’m not a superstar at them or anything, but I can play them good enough that I do okay in gym class with the other guys and all. But Lamar is not very good at any of them. Maybe it’s because he’s kinda chubby and has a fat ass. He runs way too slow, and all his moves are kinda awkward, when he’s doing something like dribbling or shooting a basketball. I’d say about the only things he can do okay is, he can hit a softball pretty far, just about as far as a lot of the big guys in our class, and he can also throw a softball pretty far. But he can’t catch a softball or a football to save his life, and he definitely can’t run any. He can hit and he’s got a strong arm. That’s all. But to tell you the truth, even his hitting ain’t that great, because all he hits is long fly balls, which are easy as pie to catch, especially for me. He can’t hit line drives up the middle or down the lines, for base hits, like good hitters can. Just long flys.

What it all amounts to is, I used to like Lamar Jackson, back when he was an okay guy in the sixth and seventh grade, but now I hate him, because of the way he picks on me all the time. And I don’t hate him because he’s black, which is what most black kids think about most white kids, that we’re all prejudiced or something. That’s the first thing that’s said whenever a black guy and a white guy at school get into it. That might be true in some cases, but that’s not the case with me. I’d hate Lamar Jackson even if he was a white kid. I’m not prejudiced against black people. I get along with them just fine, when they treat me okay. I even got along with Lamar, until he started picking on me in the eighth grade, so you can’t say I’m prejudiced or anything. In fact, some of my biggest heroes are black guys. Like Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente, who were baseball players, of course. And Muhammed Ali. And Tiran Porter, who’s somebody you’ve probably never heard of. He’s one of the Doobie Brothers, and he’s the best bass player in the whole wide world.

Plus, there’s a lot of black Brothers and Sisters that go to the Kingdom Hall, and I get along with them and like them all just fine. In fact, in some cases I like the black Brothers better than the white ones, because most of the black Brothers have a certain humbleness about them, where a lot of the white Brothers are just knuckleheads, always trying to run the show and trying to tell you what to do.

I don’t think I’m prejudiced or anything, not the way some people are, like my Dad for instance. You want to talk about somebody being prejudiced, you can talk about my Dad, that’s for sure. He doesn’t call them black people or colored people or Negroes, he calls them a different word that starts with an N. Mom has told me and Freddie never to say that word, and she doesn’t say it herself. But Dad sure does. I think it’s because he’s never really been around black people much, the way me and Freddie and Mom have, so he doesn’t know that for the most part they’re okay, just like white people. You see, Dad never went to school with black kids, because back in the old days, the black kids went to their own schools, just like the white kids did. That’s the way it was for me too, up until the fourth grade. In the fourth grade they started making the white kids and the black kids all go to the same schools together.

But I’m not like Dad when it comes to being prejudiced. I mean, I admit I hate Lamar Jackson, but it’s just because of what he’s done to me. He picks on me and he’s black, but I don’t hate all black people just because of Lamar Jackson. I just hate him. Just because he’s always doing stuff to me like what I just told you about, which was him trying to push me down in the hall before homeroom, even though I wasn’t in his way or anything. I’ve noticed that he doesn’t try that stuff on any of the other white guys, just me. I’ve given it a lot of thought over the last two years, why he seems to just pick on me all the time, and not on anybody else, and I think I’ve got it narrowed down to three things.

The first thing is because I’m the only guy in the whole class that’s smaller than he is, so maybe he thinks it’s safe to push me around, because I’m too small and chicken to fight back. Which is true. I mean, Lamar is only a little bit taller than me, but he’s got a lot of muscles, even if he is kinda fat, and that makes him about ten times stronger than me. I’m a puny little runt.

The second thing is because I’m white, so he probably thinks I’m scared of him because he’s black. Which is true. You see, for the most part, all the white guys at my school are scared of the black guys, no matter what size they are, because the black guys always stick together when there’s trouble. They take up for one another, even if they’re not kin to each other or anything, which is something most of the white guys don’t do. If a white guy has to fight a black guy, he ends up having to fight a bunch of black guys, because that black guy’s friends are gonna get into the middle of it, too, because of the way they stick together. I know if I was to ever get into it with Lamar, I’d have to go it alone against him and whatever black guys were gonna help him out, not that he’d need any help against me. I couldn’t expect any help from any white guys. Especially not from Freddie.

The third thing is what I think is the main reason he picks on me, and that’s because I’m a Witness kid. I mean, I think it’s awfully strange that I knew Lamar for two whole years before the eighth grade, and he never bothered me any, until he came to a few of the meetings at the Kingdom Hall that one summer and found out that I was a Witness kid. He thinks I am anyway, because he knows I go to the Kingdom Hall and all, and I don’t look and act like all the other worldly white kids at school, or hang around with any of them much. Being a Witness probably makes a kid seem weaker than a normal kid, because Witness kids are told not to be getting into fights and stuff at school, and to always run from trouble, and to turn the other cheek and all that kinda stuff. Witnesses are big believers in turning the other cheek, and loving your enemies and praying for them, like it says in the Bible. But what are you supposed to do when some guy is always picking on you, and you’re tired of turning the other cheek and running in the other direction all the time? Instead of taking up for yourself and getting into a fight, are you always supposed to let some guy run over top of you, and just do something like turn the other cheek and quote scriptures to the guy, while he’s standing there getting ready to pop you one? Maybe that’s what Lamar Jackson thinks I’m always gonna do, because he thinks I’m just a little weak white Witness boy. Well, I guess he’s right, for the most part. I am little, and I am weak, and I am white. I know all that. But the thing is, I don’t know if I’m really a Witness kid or not. I’m supposed to be. I’ve always had to go to all the meetings, and I look like a Witness kid, that’s for sure, with my stupid little haircut and all. But I don’t know if I am one, or not.

So that’s the deal with me and Lamar Jackson. That’s why he tried to push me down in the hallway before homeroom started, the Monday morning I’m telling you about, which was June 2, 1975. He usually only gets to pick on me in gym class, which is sixth period, but I guess since that particular Monday was the beginning of our last full week in school before summer vacation started, maybe he wanted to get in as much picking on me as he could, so he started it off as soon as he saw me in the hall that morning. That’s all I could figure, anyway. I remember thinking that I’d have to be on the lookout for him in the hallways for the rest of the week, and for Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday of the next week, too, which was exam week, to try to avoid running into him as much as I could. I wouldn’t be able to avoid him in first period English class or sixth period gym class. But at least those were the only two classes we had together, thank God. English class was no problem, really, because I always sat in the front, on one side of the room, and he always sat in the back, on the other side of the room. That was a pretty safe distance. It’s not like he could sneak up behind me and pop me one while the class was going on or anything. He could only get away with that kind of stuff in gym class, when the coach wasn’t looking, which was most of the time. But Miss Hiller, our English teacher, was always looking, so I felt pretty safe in her class.

Wallace and Wendall were still pushing and punching each other back and forth in the hall when the bell for homeroom rang, so they scuffled on into homeroom, still going at each other, and I went in behind them, and all the other kids came streaming in, too, and the homeroom teacher called the roll, to see who was there and who wasn’t there, and we all had to sit and listen to the dumb morning announcements, like we always do, and yes, we could pick up our school annuals today during lunch period, and by the way, the stuck-up tennis team won the most important match in the history of the world yesterday, so be sure and pat them fine fellows on the back when you see them around school today, and his highness Timmy Drummond has been selected to represent the rising Sophomore class at some la de da leadership camp this summer, so be sure to bow down to him and his harem when they come gliding down the hall today, and if you’re lucky, maybe he’ll even let you touch a lock of his gorgeous long blonde hair, and blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, on and on, until the bell for first period finally rang, and Warren and Wendall scuffled back out of homeroom, still going at each other, and I went out behind them.

I went on to my first period English class, and took my seat up front, where I always sit. Lamar Jackson came strutting in a few minutes later, and gave me a mean look when he went by my desk, but he didn’t try anything, he just kind of grunted and kept strutting on by. Stupid bastard.

Just as the bell rang for the period to start, Miss Hiller walked into the room, and said, “Good morning, everyone,” which is what she always says to the class, every morning. Then she glanced at me and gave me one of her special smiles, and I kinda smiled back at her. She always smiles at me like that, every morning, like she’s really glad to see me or something. And as far as I’m concerned, you haven’t been smiled at until Miss Hiller smiles at you. I’ll tell you, she’s got these big white teeth that won’t quit. They’re perfectly straight and perfectly white. I live for her smiling at me with those perfect teeth, first thing every morning.

Then comes the part that really makes my life worth living, which is the next thing she always does, every morning, besides smiling at me. You see, right after she says “Good morning, everyone,” she always comes around and sits on the front edge of her desk, which is only about two inches from where I’m sitting, and she calls the roll. Except she doesn’t just call the roll, like other teachers do, it’s more like she performs the roll. She’s got this real deep and husky movie-star voice, like one of those sexy women you always see in them old black and white movies on the late show, the ones that are always sitting in a bar somewhere smoking a cigarette and talking to Humphrey Bogart or somebody. So every morning when she’s calling the roll, I can’t wait for her to get to the G’s, just so I can hear her sexy voice when she says “Warren?” And I just pray that my voice doesn’t break any when I say “here.” I can barely stand it on the days when she’s wearing some kind of dress or skirt, because of the way she sits up there and crosses her legs back and forth and leans over to one side, especially if she’s leaning over to the side I’m on, because then her legs are practically right there in my face. That drives me wild. I’m not saying I can ever see up her skirt or anything, or that I even try to, because she doesn’t wear them that short, really. But I always get a good look at the tops of her knees on down. That’s a plenty. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I could handle seeing any more than that, anyway, without passing out or something, because not only does she have perfect teeth that won’t quit, she’s also got legs that won’t quit, too. Everything about Miss Hiller won’t quit, and I mean everything, north and south.

And then, then comes the most wonderful part of all, which happens about thirty seconds after she sits down on the edge of her desk and starts performing the roll. I’ll sit there looking but not looking at those long legs of hers, listening to the honey drip out of her voice as she’s calling out everybody’s name, just waiting for her to get to mine, and then I’ll just close my eyes and slowly take a real deep breath, and right about then, W H A M, her perfume hits me right square in the face. And then I almost do pass out, she smells so good.

Jesus, I am tee-totally in love with Miss Hiller. English would still be my favorite class, even if there was a hundred Lamar Jacksons in there beating the ever-loving shit out of me every single day. It wouldn’t matter, just as long as I had Miss Hiller to look at and to listen to and to smell. For fifty whole minutes, every day. Jesus.

Now I guess I gotta tell you everything about Miss Hiller.

Well first of all, Miss Hiller is a really neat teacher. Everybody thinks that about her, not just me. I mean, she has a way of making all the stuff that usually just bores you to death, seem okay. And man, let me tell you, they really throw that boring crap at you left and right in ninth grade English. You get it all, that’s for sure. Like, our school year is divided into four segments, with nine weeks in each segment, and the first nine weeks of this year we studied plays and drama and stuff, and we had to read “Romeo and Juliet” and “Julius Caesar” and another one I can’t seem to remember right now. The second nine weeks we spent learning how to do research and writing a term paper. That’s when I wrote “Mark Twain, the Pessimist” that I told you about before. The third nine weeks we studied poetry, and we had to read stuff like “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” and a couple of William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe poems, and some other junk I can’t remember, either. And then the last nine weeks we’ve spent reading and discussing different books. First we read A Separate Peace by John Knowles, which was okay, and then we read Rebecca by somebody, which wasn’t too bad except it was kinda long, and now we’re reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, which I told you about before, too.

Well, all that stuff that we have to read and study is basically pretty boring most of the time, but Miss Hiller is pretty good at making it seem at least a little bit interesting. She helps us understand what’s going on in them plays and poems and what they’re all about. But here’s what’s so neat about Miss Hiller, she let’s us do a lot of stuff that’s not in the book. For instance, we had to read those Shakespeare plays I just mentioned, because they were in our textbook, but when we’d gotten through them all, just for fun one day, Miss Hiller passed out copies of a script she had from a Gilligan’s Island show, and we read that out loud in class, too. I’m not sure why she did that, maybe it was to help us to see that plays and TV scripts are about the same thing, really, just that plays are a lot longer. The big difference between William Shakespeare and Gilligan’s Island is that when you’re reading a William Shakespeare play, you gotta have somebody smart like Miss Hiller around, to explain to you what’s going on all the time, because of the fancy way they talk and make speeches in them plays. They’re always giving speeches out loud to themselves, and “harking” about this, and “harking” about that, and there’s always about a hundred different characters running around all over the place that you gotta keep up with, so it’s real hard for a kid to read it by himself and make any kind of sense out of it, mainly because you fall asleep in about two seconds. But with Gilligan’s Island, you can understand it by yourself, right away, you don’t need somebody like a teacher to tell you what it all means. I’m not saying that Gilligan’s Island is better than William Shakespeare, or anything. Miss Hiller would kill me if she heard me say something like that. The truth is, I actually ended up liking most of that Shakespeare stuff, after Miss Hiller explained all the hidden meanings and what was going on and all. I’m just saying that five hundred years from now, ninth grade kids will probably still be able to read a Gilligan’s Island script and understand what it’s all about, without needing a teacher to explain everything that’s going on. And by then, it’ll take a genius to figure out William Shakespeare’s stuff.

I’m probably wrong about all that, though, because five hundred years from now, everybody will be living in the New World, and who knows if they’ll even have William Shakespeare or Gilligan’s Island in the New World. They probably won’t. They’ll probably just have the Bible, which is harder to understand than Shakespeare, some of it.

Another neat thing Miss Hiller did was during the nine weeks that we spent on poetry. You see, after we were finished studying a bunch of the long dull poems from our text book, she passed out the words to some Beatle songs, and we listened to them in class on a record player, and then tried to figure out the meanings to them and all, just like we had done for the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” and the rest of them regular poems we’d had to read. I had never thought of it before, how songs and poems are a lot alike, really, until Miss Hiller had us analyzing the words to “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields” and “A Day in the Life,” which were the Beatle songs she had given out to us. And that’s when I realized that even something as simple as “I Remember the Year that Clayton Dulaney Died” could be considered a poem, it’s just got a bunch of country music chords thrown in there, too. If you never heard the music to “Clayton Dulaney” before, you could still read the words by themselves in a book or somewhere and get the same feeling from it, because it basically just tells a story of what happened to Clayton Dulaney and the guy that used to follow him around. And that’s what a poem is supposed to do, tell a story about something.

Anyway, doing that in class was pretty neat, listening to songs and trying to figure out what kind of poems they would be if you took away the music. What it comes down to is, some songs don’t make very good poems. They gotta have the music to go along with the words, if you’re gonna like them at all. “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields” make pretty good poems, but some of the other songs we looked at don’t. For example, Miss Hiller let each of us bring in a song that we liked, if we wanted to, for the class to analyze together, so I brought in “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers, because it’s my favorite song in the whole world. She wrote the words to it up on the black board, so everybody could see them, and then we read them out loud and analyzed them and discussed them, line by line, and everybody but me pretty much agreed that “China Grove” makes a lousy poem, when you just look at the words by themselves, and don’t have the music to go along with the words.

You see, the problem with “China Grove” is that the words don’t tell much of a story. It’s basically just about the sun coming up in a place called China Grove, and there’s a preacher and a teacher that live there, and everybody in the town is gossiping about them, and then the sun goes down. Then you’re just left hanging. The song never bothers to tell you what the gossip is all about, or if the gossip is even true or not. You kinda have to fill in all that part of it your own self. Anyway, after we discussed it and analyzed it and all, we took a vote on it, and everybody in the class said it made a terrible poem. I had to agree with them a little bit, on the inside, but I couldn’t really act like I agreed with them on the outside, because I had told them it was my favorite song and all, so I felt like I had to defend it as much as I could, which wasn’t easy. The only thing I could think of to say was that China Grove is meant to represent little towns everywhere. It’s a stupid little town, just like Rustburg is, and nothing ever happens there, just like in Rustburg, except that the sun comes up everyday, the people there gossip about everybody else, and then the sun goes down. That’s it. The song doesn’t have to say anything else, because there’s nothing else to say. That’s all that ever happens, in China Grove or in Rustburg or in any other stupid little town in America. That’s probably all that ever will happen. It doesn’t matter if any of the gossip is true or not. It doesn’t make any difference.

I said all that in class, during our discussion, and I said that I agreed “China Grove” wasn’t a great poem or anything, but I thought it could at least be considered a kinda good poem, because Tom Johnston, the guy that wrote it, was at least honest about what goes on in stupid little towns all over America. In fact, all you had to do to make it into a great poem is change the opening line from, “When the sun comes up on a sleepy little town, down around San Antone...” to, “When the sun comes up on a STUPID little town, down around San Antone...” Make that one simple change, and then it’s easy to see what I was getting at.

Nobody would agree with me on that, though, they still said it was a terrible poem, even if you changed the first line. But when we played it on the record player and just listened to it without looking at the words or anything, then most everybody thought it was a great song. I don’t know, it’s just one of those songs that you have to like in spite of the lousy words. I guess it’s those loud chunka-chunka sounding guitar chords that run all the way through it, that makes it worth listening to. That’s the reason I like it so much, probably because I can’t figure out how to make those chords on my guitar. I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t find chords that sound anything like “China Grove” chords on the chart that Clyde gave me. For all I know, Tom Johnston invented them when he wrote the song, and he’s the only guy in the whole world that knows how to play them. Who knows. I know one thing, they don’t use chords like that in any country songs I’ve ever heard. There are no “China Grove” chords in “Clayton Dulaney.”

Anyway, the whole point is, I never would have noticed all that about “China Grove” or even paid that much attention to the words at all, if Miss Hiller hadn’t gotten us to study those Beatle songs and let us bring in our own songs to look at and listen to in class. That was a pretty cool thing for Miss Hiller to let us do. I’m pretty sure the other ninth grade English classes didn’t get to do that. This was her first year teaching, which means she’s a lot younger than most teachers, so maybe that’s why she let us do all those different things.

That’s part of why I like Miss Hiller so much, because I think she’s such a neat teacher, because of the stuff I just told you about. But to tell you the truth, there’s another big reason why I like her so much, besides her being a neat teacher and all, which you probably guessed already, back when I said that she drives me wild with the way she sits on her desk and crosses her legs and calls the roll in her sexy voice every morning. I’m sure I gave it away when I talked about all that stuff she’s got that won’t quit, and about her perfume knocking me out. So I’ll just come right out and say it: Miss Hiller is really hot. She’s the prettiest teacher in the whole school, the prettiest teacher I’ve ever had in my whole life. In fact, she looks more like a fashion model than an English teacher. But it’s not just that she’s beautiful and all. There’s something else to it, something that’s kinda hard to describe. The only way I can think of to say it is, there’s this look she has sometimes, not her “hot” look when she’s wearing a tight skirt or something, and not her “nice” look when she’s smiling at you or talking to you or asking you a question in class. It’s more like an expression she has, this look you sometimes see on her face, for just a split second, when she’s standing at the blackboard, looking out into space somewhere, thinking about what she’s gonna say next, right before she says it. That’s the look. I can’t explain it. I just see it sometimes. Maybe it’s just me, I don’t know.

The guys that don’t have Miss Hiller for English are always moaning about how unfair it is, because they have Mrs. Lambert, the other ninth grade English teacher. Mrs. Lambert is about a hundred years old, but looks like she’s about two hundred. She doesn’t let you study Gilligan’s Island or the Beatles or “China Grove” or anything like that. She’s probably never even heard of any of that stuff. It’s strictly by the book, with Mrs. Lambert. Everybody says she’s been teaching at Rustburg High School since it was just a one room log cabin or something. I can believe that.

I’m not the only guy in school that’s wild about Miss Hiller, of course. All the guys are in love with her. And everybody talks about her all the time, too. Like Wallace, he’s all the time telling me and Wendall what lucky dogs we are, for having Miss Hiller instead of Mrs. Lambert. And he’s all the time talking about how much he’d like to give it to Miss Hiller. Every day at the lunch table it’s the same old thing from Wallace. “God, I’d love to screw Miss Hiller,” he’ll say, as if it were a brand new idea that we haven’t heard a million times before already. “Man, I’d love to explore them hills, wouldn’t you? You’d love it, wouldn’t you? God, I would. I would LOVE it.” He keeps going on and on about it everyday, running it into the ground. I think Wallace has been reading too many Penthouse magazines. Sometimes I wish he’d just shut up.

That’s the kind of thing we usually talk about at the lunch table, while we’re eating lunch, which girls in school we’d like to have a chance to screw. But I don’t like to talk that way about Miss Hiller. It just doesn’t seem right. It seems disrespectful, in a way. I’ll say it about some of the girls in school, especially some of the cheerleaders, and talk about them in that way, but not Miss Hiller. I have to admit, though, I really have thought about it a lot, screwing Miss Hiller that is. I think about it mostly at night when I’m laying in bed, right before I go to sleep, for some reason. But I usually feel real guilty when I think about it too much, probably because I’m supposed to be a Witness kid and all, and the Witnesses are dead set against a high school kid having some fornication, whether it’s with his English teacher or one of the stupid cheerleaders or anybody else. The Witnesses say you gotta wait until you’re married before you can screw, and high school kids ain’t old enough to be married, so they shouldn’t even be thinking about it. But sometimes I can’t keep myself from thinking about what it would be like to screw Miss Hiller, because she’s so nice to me and so beautiful and all. But I keep it to myself, I don’t talk about it to anybody. It doesn’t seem right, like I said. I don’t think she wants us to think about her in that way.

I said before that Miss Hiller was always real nice to me and was always giving me a special smile every morning, like she was especially glad to see me and all. Maybe I should tell you why I think she did that. Well, I think it was because she was worried about me, because she thought I was kinda depressed or disturbed or something. That’s because of some stuff I did in her class this year.

The first thing was that Mark Twain paper I wrote. Miss Hiller gave me a good grade on it and all, like I said before, but she also wrote me a little note on the last page, saying she thought it was kinda depressing, the way it dwelt on Mark Twain’s pessimism and his views on death and all. She never said anything more to me about it, though, other than that note she wrote on the last page.

Then another thing I did was during the nine weeks that we studied poetry. We were only supposed to be reading and discussing poems and stuff, we weren’t supposed to be learning how to write them or anything, but at the very end of the nine weeks, Miss Hiller said that anybody that wanted to take a shot at writing a poem for extra credit, could. The only thing she required was that we use the same first line as the last poem we had read from our book. I don’t remember the name of that poem or who wrote it, but the first line was “Last night I dreamed,” and it was about this dream that the poet had where everything in the world was wonderful, and there was peace all over, and everybody got along, in spite of who they were and where they were from and what they believed in and what color they were, and so on. Well, I definitely needed the extra credit because I hadn’t done too good on our poetry tests and quizzes during the nine weeks, so I figured I’d better try to write a poem and get as much extra credit as I could. That was a Thursday, the day that Miss Hiller told us we could write a poem, and the next day was when we’d have to turn it in, because Friday was the last day of the nine weeks.

Anyway, I had to go to the Thursday night meeting at the Kingdom Hall that night, like I always do. And at the meeting, one of the Brothers gave a talk about Judas Iscariot, about how evil he was for betraying Jesus, and how Jesus said it would have been better off for Judas if he’d never been born, and how Judas was so messed up about everything that he went out and committed suicide, and how we’d all do well to learn from this example and avoid betraying the Truth the way that Judas betrayed Jesus and all. So anyway, when I got home from the Kingdom Hall that night, I remembered that I had to get that poem written, if I was gonna get the extra credit I needed, so right before I went to bed I sat down and wrote the first line on a sheet of paper, “Last night I dreamed,” but I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say after that. I sat there a while, just staring at the paper and waiting for something to come into my head, and I guess all that Judas Iscariot stuff from the talk at the Kingdom Hall that night must have been floating around in the back of my mind, because I started writing the rest of the poem about what it would be like to commit suicide. I didn’t give it a title or anything, but this is what I wrote:

Last night I dreamed I killed myself, deader than a doornail.

I left a note for all my friends,

and wished them all a fond farewell.

I took a hundred sleeping pills.

I drank a glass of wine.

I smoked a joint and listened to

the Doobie Brothers, one last time.

Last night I dreamed I killed myself,

deader than a doornail.

A self destructive act it was.

I gave the finger to the world.

My family was gathered,

to bury me in shame.

My friends all paid their last respects,

then hurried off again.

Last night I dreamed I killed myself,

deader than a doornail.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know why I wrote it like that, I mean, I’ve never really thought about killing myself before or anything. And all that crap about drinking a glass of wine and smoking a joint and giving everybody the finger, well, I don’t know where all that stuff came from. It was all stupid, really. Everything I do is stupid. I can’t believe that I was stupid enough to write it in the first place, and then stupid enough to turn it in for extra credit, and then even more stupid for not realizing it could get me into some kind of trouble or something. I don’t know, I guess it was that talk about Judas betraying Jesus that started it all. That’s all I can figure. It’s not a poem I put that much thought into, that’s for sure. I just wrote a bunch of lines down real quick, once I got to going on it, and when it looked like there was enough to be a poem, I stopped. I was just hoping for five or ten points of extra credit, that’s all.

I turned my poem in the next day, and didn’t think any more about it after that. But then on Monday, after Miss Hiller had told us about what books we were gonna be reading and discussing for the last nine weeks of the year, she stopped me at her desk when I was on the way out, at the end of class, and asked me if I could come by and talk to her during lunch period that day. Of course that sounded great to me, I always loved talking to Miss Hiller, whenever I could.

So I went back to her class room during lunch period that day, and we kinda talked about one thing or another for a few minutes, while she was messing with some papers on her desk, and after another minute or so, she said, “Warren, I don’t know how to say this, but frankly, I’m a little bit concerned about you.” I didn’t know what she was talking about, really. I was starting to get afraid that maybe she was about to tell me that I had flunked the last nine weeks of poetry or something. I knew I hadn’t done real great or anything in poetry, but I didn’t think I’d done that bad.

Then she said, “What concerns me is this poem you wrote, for the extra credit, for the last nine weeks.” She pulled the poem out of her desk and was sitting there reading it again, to herself. I was just standing there, beside her desk, watching her read it. Then she said, “Warren, I don’t know how to put this, but, are you okay?” She was looking me right in the eye when she said it, and she looked like she was about to start crying or something.

I still didn’t know what she was talking about. All I could figure was that she didn’t like my poem and wasn’t gonna give me any extra credit for it. I didn’t know what she was expecting me to say, so I said, “Am I okay? Yeah, I guess I’m okay, why?”

“Why? It’s your poem. It’s so...it’s so...well, it concerns me. Frankly, it scares me. Why on earth did you write a poem about killing yourself?”

When she said that, that’s when I finally realized what she was talking about, and that I might be in some kind of trouble or something.

Well, I didn’t want to tell her the truth, about how I was a Jehovah’s Witness, and about the Judas talk at the Kingdom Hall. I definitely didn’t want to get into any of that stuff, because I don’t want anybody at school to know that I’m supposed to be a Witness kid or anything. So I said, “I don’t know, it’s just something that I wrote, that’s all. I mean, I didn’t really mean anything by it, or anything. I just sat down and...wrote it. That’s all.”

Then she said, “There’s got to be more to it than that, Warren, even if you don’t realize it. If this poem represents some kind of cry for help, I certainly don’t want to ignore it or let it pass by unheeded. What I’m trying to say is, I feel it’s my duty to make sure you receive any kind of help you may need. If there’s a problem here, there are many, many ways we can address it and resolve it, before something terrible happens, God forbid.”

She looked at the poem again, and slowly shook her head. Then she said, “If you’re having problems here at school, or if you’re having personal problems of some kind at home, I can contact one of our guidance counselors, and they can set up some meetings with you, and bring in your parents, and—“

“No! No, there’s no need to do all that. There’s no problem here. Really.” Jesus, I could see I was gonna have to come up with something real quick, before Miss Hiller decided this was some kind of full blown emergency or something. She sounded like she was ready to bring in the National Guard. So I said, “I’m really sorry if my poem scared you, Miss Hiller, I really am. I never meant it to be taken seriously, or anything. To tell you the truth, I don’t know why I wrote all that stuff. I think I saw something on the news that night, about some guy killing himself somewhere, or something, and I must have thought it would make an interesting poem, I guess. That’s probably where it all came from, from the news. And that stuff about the joint and the wine and all, that’s just stupid crap I threw in, because I needed some more lines, that’s all. I don’t really smoke joints and drink wine, honest I don’t. So you see, the poem can’t be about me. It’s just made up stuff. Honest!”

She sat there a minute, looking up at me, and then looking down at that stupid poem, and then looking back up at me again. Then she said, “Warren, maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but...then again maybe I should. You’re one of my favorite students, Warren. There’s something about you, something different from some of the other kids. It’s hard to describe, but it comes out sometimes in your papers, and in the way you express yourself in class. You’re definitely one of a kind. And I sense that, in some subtle way, you desperately want those around you to recognize it, that you’re different. Maybe you don’t realize that about yourself...but it’s there. It’s there in every thing you do. You’re a very bright boy.”

It’s funny, but it was kinda hard for me to stand there and listen to Miss Hiller talk about how great she thought I was, even though it made me feel really good that she was saying all that stuff. I just didn’t know if I was supposed to say anything, like thank-you or aw, shucks, or something. She was right, though, I was all the time trying to do stuff and say stuff in her class that would make her think I was special, somehow. I really wanted her to like me.

Then she said, “But I also sense a certain sadness about you, Warren, something I can’t quite put my finger on. The first of it was in that Mark Twain paper. And I’ve picked up on it from time to time in some of the things you’ve said in class. And now this poem...well, I don’t know what to make of this poem...I just don’t know.” She looked back down at the poem.

Well, I didn’t know what else to say. I just stood there like an idiot, watching her look at my poem. I was wishing I’d never wrote the damn thing. Forget the extra credit, I didn’t need it that bad.

Finally, she took a deep breath and let out a big sigh. Then she reached out and touched me on the arm and said, “You’re sure nothing is wrong? You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I want you to look me in the eye, and tell me you’re okay.”

So I looked her in the eye and said, “I’m okay. Honest.”

“Okay,” she said. And then she did something I couldn’t believe. She actually stood up and gave me a little hug, right there in her class room. She patted me on the head and smiled real big and said, “Okay, then. Ten extra points!”

That was actually the second time I’d been hugged by one of my teachers. The first time was by Mrs. Milton, my first grade teacher. But Mrs. Milton wasn’t nearly as young and beautiful as Miss Hiller, so I’d have to say that I enjoyed Miss Hiller’s hug the most. Mrs. Milton was still a good teacher, though. She did a good job of teaching me how to read and write, which has to be a pretty hard thing to teach a little kid, if you stop and think about it. I don’t think I could teach anybody to do it.

Being hugged by Mrs. Milton also kinda has something to do with why I don’t want anybody at school knowing about me being a Jehovah’s Witness, not even my teachers. You see, every year from the first grade on up through the fourth grade, Mom always made it a point to go down to the school before the first day and talk to my new teacher, and tell them about how I was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I wasn’t gonna be allowed to salute the flag with the other kids, or take part in Christmas activities, or Halloween activities, or Thanksgiving activities, or Easter activities, or birthday parties, or any other pagan activities, or sing any kind of holiday or religious songs. She probably told them if I got hurt and started bleeding to death, they couldn’t give me a blood transfusion, either.

Mom talked to Freddie’s teachers about the same stuff, too.

So anyway, Mom talked to Mrs. Milton about all that stuff that I wasn’t allowed to do, before I started into the first grade, and Mrs. Milton said it was okay, that nobody would force me to do anything that was against my religion. So every morning, when it was time to do the flag salute, Mrs. Milton would nod at me, and I would get up and go stand outside the class room door, out in the hallway, while all the other kids stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance. Then they’d sing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, and when they were finished, I’d come on back into the room and go back to my seat. Of course, all the other kids would stare at me the whole time I was going out and coming in. They probably thought I was a communist or something.

Then when one of the holidays came around, and all the other kids were working on their little art projects, like making Halloween masks, or Christmas decorations for the room, or something like that, I’d have to sit at my desk and color on a sheet of construction paper or something, anything so long as it wasn’t related to whatever holiday was being celebrated. And at Christmas time, when the other kids played Pollyanna, which is where they drew each other’s names and gave a Christmas gift to whoever’s name they had drawn, I wasn’t involved with that either. They probably thought I was a Jew or something.

I guess I felt a little strange about all that, doing stuff other than what the other kids were doing most of the time, but I’d never known any different, so I don’t guess it bothered me that much. Christmas was the worst, every year, because the other kids couldn’t believe that I didn’t get any gifts or anything for Christmas, so they would always ask me about that, and why I couldn’t celebrate it like everybody else. And I really didn’t know why, other than the fact that I was a Jehovah’s Witness, and Mom said Jesus really wasn’t born on December 25th, and Santa Claus was a pagan. Of course I had no idea what a pagan was or anything, but I told all the other kids that he was one, anyway.

One thing I remember about the first grade was the whole week after Christmas vacation, some of the kids brought in a bunch of the neat toys and stuff they got for Christmas, for Show and Tell time. But I didn’t get any new toys or anything else for Christmas, like the rest of them did, so I didn’t get up and say anything during Show and Tell. I remember one day, everybody had gone through their Show and Tell stuff, and Mrs. Milton said something like, “Does anybody have anything else to show? Is that everybody?” And Bobby Cannon yelled out, “That’s everybody except Warren, but he doesn’t believe in Show and Tell. He doesn’t believe in ANYTHING!” And all the kids busted out laughing, but Mrs. Milton called Bobby out of the room and yelled at him or something, and then she made him stand in the corner during art time that afternoon. That made Bobby pretty mad, of course, and he pushed me down on the playground the next day, and called me a little baby. He picked on me the rest of the year. He was just a big bully, all in all.

Another thing that happened, during February of that year, the year I was in first grade, I had the flu or something, and I missed three or fours days of school. And the day that I was well enough to go back also happened to be Valentines Day. But of course, I didn’t know what Valentines Day was or anything. I’d never even heard of it before. When I got to school that day, I saw how all the other kids had made these big pouch-like things, out of construction paper, and decorated them with little red hearts and lace and stuff, and stuck them up on one of the display boards on the wall. Everybody had their own pouch, with their name printed in big letters right on the front of it, stuck up there on the board. Somebody had even made one with my name on it, and stuck it up there.

As each kid got to school that day, they went up to that board and put these small envelopes into each pouch. There was this little blonde headed girl named Wendy in my room, that I kinda had a crush on, and I think she kinda had one on me, too. And when she got there that morning she put a bunch of stuff in the different pouches, like the rest of them had, and then she came over to my desk and said something like, “Warren, I made you a Valentines holder, while you were sick, so that you’d have one, too.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, so I just said, “Thanks, Wendy.”

Anyway, at the very end of the day, right before we were supposed to start getting on our coats and hats and stuff, and go wait for our buses, Mrs. Milton said it was time for everyone to collect their Valentines. Everybody seemed to be pretty excited about that, but I just kinda sat there, still not knowing what was going on. So Mrs. Milton started calling out each kid’s name, and one by one they went up to the board, and she pulled down the pouch with their name on it, and gave it to them, and then they went back to their seats. When she called my name, I didn’t know what else to do, so I did like everybody else and went up there and got my pouch, and then sat back down. But I didn’t open it up and look inside it or anything, like the rest of them were doing. I must have been afraid to.

I don’t know why, but after a few minutes I started feeling real sad, like I had done something wrong or something I wasn’t supposed to. I started feeling worse and worse, and then I kinda started to cry, a little bit. And Mrs. Milton must have noticed it before any of the other kids did, because she came over to my desk and said, “Warren, come with me,” and she took me by the hand and led me out into the hallway, outside the room. By that time I really was crying, not just a little bit, but a whole lot. Mrs. Milton crouched down in front of me and said, “Warren, what’s wrong, why are you crying?”

I was standing there holding onto the little pouch of Valentines with my name on it, trying to talk, but I was almost crying too much to get any words out, like I had a case of the heebie-jeebies or something. Finally I got enough words out to say, “Mrs. Milton, I don’t know if Jehobah’s Witnesses are supposed to like Balentines.”

That’s the way I talked when I was a little kid. I couldn’t say anything with a V in it, it always came out sounding like a B.

Even though it was almost ten years ago, I still remember exactly what Mrs. Milton did next. She put her hands on my shoulders and said, “You poor, poor child.” And then she put her arms around me and hugged me real tight. Then she let go and held me away from her and said, “It’s alright, Warren. You don’t have to take your Valentines home with you, if you don’t want to. You can keep them here at school, in my desk, if you’d like.”

I looked up at Mrs. Milton, and I remember thinking how she was the nicest person in the whole world. I rubbed my eyes and said, “Thank you, bery much.”

I quit crying, and she took me back into the class room, and I opened the little pouch and looked at my Valentines. In a few more minutes it was time for everybody to leave for the day, so Mrs. Milton put my pouch of Valentines in the top drawer of her desk, just like she said she would. And that’s where they stayed, from then on. Sometimes I wonder if she still has them.

It’s because of stuff like that, that I don’t like for people at school to know that I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. I mean, maybe Miss Hiller is right, that I try to get people to think that I’m different, but I only want them to think I’m different in a good way. I don’t want anybody to think that I’m strange, or that I’m different in a weird way, which is how I felt back when everybody knew I didn’t celebrate Christmas and salute the flag and things like that. Back then, at my old school, everybody knew I was different, because of the way Mom would always go have those talks with my new teacher, at the beginning of each school year, so that the teacher would make sure I didn’t do any of the things Mom said I wasn’t allowed to. But when we moved to where we live now and I started going to different schools, which was at the end of the fourth grade, Mom stopped doing all that. It was about that time that she decided me and Freddie should be spiritually mature enough to explain our beliefs to our teachers, without her having to go all the way down to Rustburg every year to do it for us. But I never bothered to talk to any of my teachers about me being a Witness or anything, that’s for sure. I had enough of that back at my old school. Besides, nobody salutes the flag anymore, anyway, and when you get on up past the fourth grade or so, they don’t make such a big deal out of holidays and stuff, the way they do when you’re a little kid in the first or second grade. In some ways it gets easier to seem normal, when you get to high school, even though you’re not. In fact, except for the stupid way I have to wear my hair so short, I probably seem like a fairly normal guy, to all the other kids in high school, all in all. I hope so, anyway.

I guess I’ve gotten a little bit off track, talking about Valentines Day when I was in the first grade, and about being hugged by Mrs. Milton, and about why I don’t like for anybody at school to know that I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, and all that stuff, but I kinda have to explain these things as they come up. I’ll try to go back to where I was before, talking about the things that happened on Monday, June 2, 1975.

Anyhow, like I was saying a ways back, before I got side-tracked on that other stuff, I went to my first period English class with Miss Hiller. Nothing much happened there, except I got to look at Miss Hiller the whole time, and breathe her in. She tried to get the class into a discussion about chapter eight of Slaughterhouse-Five, which we were supposed to have read over the weekend, but you could tell that a lot of the kids hadn’t bothered to even read it, and the rest of us were too stupid to remember something even after we’d just read it. Miss Hiller seemed a little miffed, but she didn’t yell at us or anything. Instead, she read a few passages from the chapter out loud to us, which was nice, because she’s such a good reader, and because she has such a sexy voice. She read the part where the bombs were dropped on Dresden, and after she read it, she asked us stuff like how did it make us feel, and what did it make us think about, and questions like that. Of course, nobody could think of much of anything interesting to say, so we all just sat there like dummies, looking at each other. Then finally a couple of the girls said the whole thing sounded terrible to them, and it was such a shame all those innocent people were killed like that. Then most of the other girls said they felt that way, too. And then a couple of the guys said something like “all is fair in love and war.” Most of the guys kinda took that side. The discussion went back and forth like that for a while.

Then Miss Hiller turned and asked me what I thought, and I said I could kinda see both sides of it, how we probably had to do it, but it was too bad so many people had to die. I didn’t say anything about how when I had read the chapter the night before, it had made me depressed, because it had reminded me of what Armageddon and the end of the world was gonna be like, for some reason. I really wanted to say something like that, because it seemed like a smarter thing to say than what I did say, and it might have impressed Miss Hiller a little bit, maybe. But I didn’t want to give anybody the chance to ask me how come I know so much about Armageddon. I could just picture Lamar Jackson blurting out something from the back of the room, like, “How come you know so much about that kind of thing? I thought only Jehovah’s Witnesses were big into that Armageddon stuff. You not one of them Jehovah Witness boys, are you?”

I didn’t want to get into any of that, of course, so I just played it safe and said I could see both sides to it. Miss Hiller seemed a little disappointed that was all I was gonna add to the discussion, but I couldn’t help it.

About ten seconds before the bell rang to end the class, Miss Hiller called on Lamar and asked him what he thought, and he said, “I don’t think nothing. It didn’t bother me one way or the other. It was just white folks killing white folks, and that’s fine with me.”

The bell rang just as Lamar got that last part out, and before Miss Hiller could say anything, so she just kinda sighed and shook her head a little. But while we were all getting up to leave the room, she said, “You people better make sure and read the next chapter tonight. You might actually have a quiz on it tomorrow. A word to the wise.”

Lamar kinda bumped into me again on the way out, but I don’t think anybody noticed. I just let him go on by. I didn’t say anything.

The next two periods of my day, second and third, I don’t really have that much to say about. They’re just regular average classes that I have, and nothing special ever happens in them. Second period is Algebra, which is okay. Mrs. Thompson, my teacher, is nice and she’s not too hard, so my grades in there are usually B’s, once in a while an A, not because I’m a genius or anything, but because Mrs. Thompson is not a Nazi like Miss Schull, my eighth grade math teacher was. Miss Schull worked the hell out of you and gave you homework every night, and gave you a quiz every day and a test every Friday. I never got better than a C with Miss Schull. That was a lot of pressure, being in her class, having to work that hard all the time. I’m really glad Mrs. Thompson is easier on us.

Third period is Typing with Miss Kelsey. She’s okay, too. I usually get B’s in there, and it’s not too hard or anything. It can get kinda nerve wracking sometimes, though, because she drills you all the time, which is where you have to type as fast as you can for five straight minutes without making any mistakes. I can type about thirty words a minute, which ain’t so hot, but it ain’t so bad either, I guess. I’m about the only guy in the class. For some reason, not many guys take typing. The reason I’m taking it is the same reason that Freddie took it, too, which is because Mom said it would be good for us to be able to type up the talks we have to give at the Kingdom Hall, and for school papers, too. I guess typing is a handy thing to know how to do, plus you get to be in a class with a whole bunch of girls, which definitely ain’t bad. And like I said before, I think a lot of the reason I got an A on my Mark Twain paper is because I typed it up, so being able to type has already paid off a lot. My Mark Twain paper was pretty lousy and depressing, all in all, but the footnotes were lined up perfectly. I’ve noticed that anything you type looks more important than if you just wrote it down on a piece of paper by hand, even something like a Kingdom Hall talk.

After my first period English class with Miss Hiller was over, I went on to second period Algebra class, and then to third period Typing class, and then I went to lunch. They had set up a special table in the lunch room where you could go and pick up your annual, if you’d ordered one. So I got in line there and got my annual, and then I went and bought an ice cream sandwich and a carton of chocolate milk, and then I went and sat down at the usual table with Wallace and Wendall. It’s just the three of us that sit there. There’s a couple of empty chairs at our table, but nobody ever comes over and sits with us, which is fine with us. That stupid bastard Timmy Drummond walked by our table one day at the beginning of the year, with a couple of stupid girls that think he’s so damn cute following behind him, and they were looking for a place to sit or something, and he stopped and looked at our table for a second, as if he was actually considering sitting with us, and then he said real loud, “Nope, can’t sit here, this must be the W table.” Then he busted out laughing, and the girls with him busted out laughing, too, and they all went over and sat down on the other side of the lunch room. I hate that bastard. Wallace and Wendall hate him, too. It’s like Timmy thinks he’s too good to sit at the same table with us. But that’s fine with us, because we know a little something that Timmy doesn’t know. You see, our table is on the same wall as the ice cream counter. And the person that runs the ice cream counter just happens to be the one and only Kathy Lendover. She’s a senior and she’s a cheerleader, so half the time she’s wearing her tiny little red cheerleader outfit. And from where me and Wallace and Wendall sit, every time somebody at the ice cream counter orders a strawberry ice cream sandwich, and Kathy Lendover has to lean way over into the case to get it, well, we get a really nice shot of those special little red cheerleader panties that they wear under their little skirts. So all during lunch period, me and Wallace and Wendall take turns going up there and ordering a strawberry ice cream sandwich, just so Kathy has to bend over into the case to get it. The truth is, we all like the regular ice cream sandwiches better than the strawberry flavored ones, but Kathy can reach the regular ones without having to bend way over into the case. And the whole idea of course is to make her bend over for the strawberry ones.

That’s how we always spend our lunch period, watching Kathy Lendover do her thing at the ice cream counter. Except we call her Kathy Bendover, instead of Lendover. Wallace came up with that. Wallace is always coming up with stuff like that. We’ll all be sitting there, and he’ll stand up and say something like, “Okay, boys, it’s Kathy BENDover time,” or, “Red Panty Alert, boys, Red Panty Alert.” And then he’ll go up there and get one strawberry ice cream sandwich, while me and Wendall sit back at our table and enjoy the show. And five minutes later, he’ll go back and buy one more. And then me and Wendall will go and do the same thing. Me and Wallace and Wendall each eat at least three or four strawberry ice cream sandwiches every day. Of course, Kathy doesn’t wear her cheerleading outfit everyday, so we don’t always get to see her little red panties, but even when she’s got on something like a tight pair of Levi’s, which is most of the time, it’s still worth looking at. She’s got a really nice ass. And Kathy is always nice to us, even though we’re just stupid pimple-faced freshmen. She smiles at us and doesn’t act stuck up like most of the other cheerleaders do, and she never asks us why we don’t just buy our ice cream sandwiches all together, instead of one at a time. She’s a blonde.

I got my annual and my strawberry ice cream sandwich and my milk, and I sat down with Wendall and Wallace. They were sitting there thumbing through their annuals.

“Hey, Grubbie,” Wallace said.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, Grubworm,” Wendall said.

“Hey,” I said.

“Oh, my God,” Wallace said.

“What? What?” Wendall said.

“Page 100. Page 100.” So me and Wendall started thumbing through our books real quick, trying to find page 100.

“OH, MY GOD,” Wendall said.

When I finally got to it, I saw what they were talking about. There on page 100 was a full page photo of Miss Hiller, sitting on her desk in the middle of one of her classes, with her body turned kinda sideways, looking over her shoulder at the camera, with a big smile on her face. I have to tell you, it was the sexiest picture I had ever seen, definitely. It was sexier than any of Ray’s calendars at the Fort Avenue Barber Shop. It was even sexier than some of the pictures I’ve seen in Penthouse magazine, which I get to look at sometimes at Danny Riley’s house. Miss Hiller wasn’t naked or anything in her picture, of course, like the girls on Ray’s calendars and the girls in Penthouse magazine, but still she had that special look about her, the look I tried to explain before. I don’t know why, but sometimes a girl with all her clothes on can be sexier than one with all her clothes off. Girls in pictures, anyway. I don’t know about girls in real life. I’ve never seen a real live naked girl before. Not up close and in person.

Then Wendall read out loud the goofy little caption that was written under Miss Hiller’s photo: “Miss Pamela Hiller is caught in the act of teaching first period Freshman English.”

Wallace said, “Jesus, I’d like to catch her in the act of something, and I don’t mean the act of teaching Freshman English, if you know what I mean. Jesus, is that what you guys get to look at everyday in first period, while I’m across the hall suffering through Mrs. Lambert’s bullshit? Life ain’t fair, that’s all I got to say, life ain’t fair.” Then he slammed his head down on the lunch room table a couple of times, like he was having a seizure or something.

Then Wendall said, “Hey, Warren, look! That’s your foot! That’s your foot at the bottom of the picture!” And sure enough, I looked at the photo of Miss Hiller and saw my foot there. That was the only thing you could see in it besides Miss Hiller sitting on her desk, with a little bit of the blackboard back behind her, and part of the window across the room in front of her. Right there at the bottom right-hand corner, right about where I always sit in front of her desk, was my left foot. You could tell it was mine because of the beat up old Converse tennis shoes I always used to wear. I bought a new pair not too long ago.

Wendall said, “You lucky bastard. Your foot got to be in the same annual picture as Miss Hiller. How lucky can you get?”

Wallace said, “Yeah, I’d give a million dollars if I could just be Warren’s foot. Just to be that close to Pamela.”

Then we all busted out laughing. It was weird, but I had a funny feeling about it, like I was honored or something, to have my foot in Miss Hiller’s annual picture.

We all sat there thumbing through the annuals some more. Wallace said, “Hey, check this out. I’m looking at the index here in the back. Look how many times Timmy Drummond is in here. Count ‘em. Twenty-seven times! Can you believe that shit. What a bastard.”

Wendall said, “Yeah, well, what do you expect. One of his stupid girlfriends is probably on the annual staff. She was probably the one that got to pick which pictures went in. That’s all it is. What a bastard. How many times you in there?”

Wallace counted, and said, “Five. How about you?”

“Four,” Wendall said. “I don’t guess that’s too bad.”

Then Wallace said, “Holy shit, check it out Grubworm. You ain’t even in the damn index.”

I turned back to the index, to where my name should have been, and Wallace was right, I wasn’t even in there. Then I remembered that I didn’t show up the day they took school pictures, I was sick or something, and I didn’t want to go have it done when they had make-up day for those that had missed it the first time around, because I’d just gotten another haircut and I was looking like a stupid geek. So that’s why I wasn’t in the regular section with everybody else in the freshman class. But it seems to me that I would have shown up somewhere else, though. I mean, I’d been to a few pep rallies during the year, and a couple of football games last fall, and I have to walk around school all day long, going back and forth down the halls to my classes and all, just like everybody else does, so you’d think that somewhere along the line I’d show up in the background of some stupid picture of something, because some idiot from the annual staff is all the time running around taking pictures of everything that’s happening. But I didn’t show up anywhere.

Wendall said, “You know, this really burns my ass. Check this out. Page 46. Here’s a damn picture of Timmy Drummond getting off the damn school bus.” Then he flipped through a few pages. “Page 55. Here’s one of him standing in the damn lunch line.” Then he flipped through some more. “Page 61. Here’s one of him looking through his damn locker, for Christ’s sake. But there’s not one lousy picture of Warren. Well, all I can say is, that really eats shit. Warren, you oughta launch some kinda protest or something.” Wendall sounded like he was being serious.

Then Wallace said, “Yeah, you’d think they’d at least have something in the index like WARREN GRUBBER’S FOOT, SEE PAGE 100.” They both busted out laughing again.

I laughed with them. I didn’t say anything, though. I didn’t really care, to tell you the truth. I’m just as happy being invisible. The thing I was trying to figure out was, how could I be sitting in Miss Hiller’s class when somebody came in there and snapped that picture on page 100, and I don’t even remember it happening? I thought that was kinda strange. But then I looked at the picture again, and in it Miss Hiller was wearing one of her shortest skirts, which is also one of my favorites, so I was probably too busy checking out her legs and trying to smell her perfume to even notice that someone was standing there with a camera, taking a picture of the whole thing. It could have been all six of the damn Doobie Brothers and a couple of the Beatles standing there taking pictures of her that day, and I wouldn’t have noticed them. I’m sure my attention was on something else.

We sat there some more, eating lunch and looking at the annuals. Every time one of us found something we thought was stupid, or a good picture of a hot chick, we’d blurt out the page number, and we’d all turn to that page and laugh at whoever it was, or drool over it, if it was a nice looking girl.

Then Wallace yelled out, “Page 156. Eight down. Two across.” Me and Wendall turned there real quick. It was a page full of eight graders.

Wallace said, “Virginia? Virginia? VIRGIN-ia?”

He was talking about Ginny Milner. Except they had her in the annual as Virginia Milner. I never really thought about that being her real name, but I guess it is.

“VIRGIN-ia, huh?” Wallace said. “Well, how about that. What’dya think, Wendall, is VIRGIN-ia Milner really still a virgin?”

“Definitely,” said Wendall, “I’d bet a million dollars that she is.”

What they were trying to do again was give me a hard time, that’s all. You see, Ginny Milner is an eighth grade girl that was in my fifth period art class. Wendall was in that class, too. Anyway, somehow a while back, me and Ginny got to sitting at the same table together in art class, and talking and all, while we were working on our different projects and stuff, and then I guess she developed a little crush on me, a little bit, because I’m a Freshman and I’m older than she is and all. And after a while, I kinda started liking her, too, because she’s a pretty cool girl, and because she’s really the only girl at school this year that’s been nice to me, and she doesn’t act like she thinks I’m a complete geek. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to bother her that I’m not popular or famous around school, and that I’ve got a stupid short haircut, and that I’ve got a few pimples on my face, and that my voice breaks all the time when I’m talking, and that I’m the smallest ninth grader in the history of the world.

Wendall was in the same art class with me and Ginny, like I said, and he picked up on the fact that me and Ginny had started sitting together and talking and all, so he told Wallace about it, and after that, they started giving me a hard time about it all the time, especially at lunch. Wallace would say stuff like, “You like ‘em young, huh Warren. You better watch out for that jail bait, my man.” That’s what they started calling her, Ginny Jailbait. Every once in a while Wallace would say something like, “Hey, Warren, how’s it going with you and old Ginny Jailbait? You gonna be serving some hard time here pretty soon, boy?”

At first it kinda bothered me when they said stuff like that and tried to hassle me and make me mad, but after a while I didn’t really pay any attention to them, most of the time. I know that’s just the way they are. Anything for a laugh. Besides, even though Ginny is just a little eighth grader and doesn’t look like Kathy Lendover yet, I think Wallace and Wendall are really just jealous that I’ve got a girl that likes me, and they don’t. They’d have a hard time getting a seventh grader from the intermediate school to like them. Or even a sixth grader. So that’s what I think it is, they’re just jealous.

I don’t know what all to tell you about Ginny Milner. First, I guess I can tell you what she looks like. Well, I guess you could say that Ginny is kinda at that awkward stage that some girls go through. I mean, she’s pretty skinny, and she wears glasses, and she’s got braces on her teeth. But she’s got a nice smile, and big brown eyes, and nice skin. And she’s got a cute little pug nose, with freckles on it. One of the best things about her is she’s got really long dark hair, which always looks good and smells real clean. And another thing is, she’s always cheerful. She’s never talking about somebody in a bad way or putting somebody down, the way I always seem to be doing. Truthfully, Ginny’s the kind of girl that ain’t all that hot yet, body-wise, but you can tell just by looking at her that she’s gonna bloom sooner or later, and turn out to be really pretty. And the great thing about it is, you can tell she doesn’t have any idea that she’s gonna be beautiful one day. I mean, some girls are already pretty, and they know it, so they act stuck up about it. And then some girls that ain’t all that pretty know that one day they will be pretty, but they’re already acting stuck up about it, even though it hasn’t happened yet. But the thing with Ginny is, she doesn’t have any idea whatsoever that she’s gonna turn out to be really hot. I don’t know how I can tell all that, but I can. It’s just a gut feeling I have about her, that’s all. So it’s no big deal to me that Ginny doesn’t already have a body like Kathy Lendover or somebody like that, yet. In fact, I’m kinda glad she doesn’t already, because then she probably never would have gotten a crush on me at all in the first place. She’d probably be hot for some stupid little eighth grader boy with long hair. Or some stupid bastard like Timmy Drummond.

The thing about Ginny that I was having the hardest time figuring out, was whether or not she should be my girlfriend. I mean, that’s practically all I thought about most of the time, was asking her to be my girlfriend and all, because of everything I’ve told you about her, but of course there was the other side to it, me being a Jehovah’s Witness and all that crap. Like I said before, the Witnesses believe that you shouldn’t even date a girl or have a girlfriend until you’re ready to get married, so if you’re not old enough to get married, then just forget about having a girlfriend. And if the girl you want to be your girlfriend is not also a Jehovah’s Witness, well, that’s definitely out of the question. It’s a real no-no for a Witness to date or marry a worldly person. So that means if I go by Witness rules, I won’t be able to have a girlfriend until I finish school and get a job, and can afford to get married, because in their view that’s what dating is all about, trying to find somebody to get married to. The thing is, though, Armageddon is coming in October, and who knows what’s gonna happen after that. I mean, there might not even be such a thing as having a girlfriend or dating or even getting married in the New World. And at the rate I’m going, who knows if I’ll even make it there to find out. My chances definitely don’t look good.

To tell you the truth, I was really wanting to ask Ginny to go with me and be my girlfriend and all that. Then we could do what everybody else around school does, the ones that are going together, I mean. You see, when you go with a girl, you’re supposed to hang around with her in the hall before school starts in the morning, and you hold hands with her when you’re walking around between classes and at lunch. And you share the same locker with her. Sometimes you might even kiss her between classes, if you can get away with it. It’s against school rules, but a lot of kids get away with it, when there aren’t any teachers or anybody else around to catch them doing it. I figured it would be pretty neat, to do all that with Ginny if she was my girlfriend. I knew I’d definitely feel more normal, if I could do that kinda stuff with Ginny, like most of the other guys in school did with their girlfriends, and not like some total geek, which was my usual way of feeling. But I also knew I probably could never do all that stuff with Ginny, because the first thing that would happen is, Freddie would see me walking down the hall holding Ginny’s hand, and he’d run straight home and tell Mom, and then I’d get into all kinds of trouble, for having a girlfriend, especially one that’s not a Witness. And even if Freddie wasn’t around to catch me and Ginny holding hands or something, we’d have a hard time going together, because we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other on the phone at night, the way you’re supposed to when you’re going with someone, because Mom would want to know who I was talking to on the phone all the time, and she’d get mad if I told her the truth, that it was my girlfriend I was talking to, and then Mom’d start yelling at me and tell me I’m not allowed to have a girlfriend, because I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, and on and on and on and on. And even if I managed somehow to find a way to get around all that, I figured it probably still wouldn’t work out for Ginny to be my girlfriend, because if she was my girlfriend she’d expect us to give each other Christmas presents and birthday presents of course, the way normal boyfriends and girlfriends do, and I’d either have to go ahead and tell her that I couldn’t celebrate Christmas and birthdays because I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, which probably would make her want to break up with me right away, for being such a weirdo, or I would have to try and go along with it, and somehow sneak around and buy Ginny Christmas presents and birthday presents, without Mom or Freddie finding out, and hope that Ginny never found out that I was a Jehovah’s Witness in the first place. I just didn’t see how I could pull all that off. I mean, it’s hard enough for me to keep it quiet around school that I’m a Witness, even considering the fact that I’ve only got about two or three friends in the whole school. I was sure it would be impossible to keep it a secret from Ginny. It just couldn’t be done, I didn’t think.

But I kept thinking about it all the time, anyway. I just didn’t know what to do about it.

Wallace and Wendall were still looking at Ginny’s picture in the annual. Wallace said, “So tell us, Warren, when you gonna finally make your move on old Ginny Jailbait, huh? The damn school year’s almost over, you only got a week left, you know.”

Wendall said, “Yeah, Warren, I bet she’s dying to give it to you, man. You gonna ask her to go out with you, or not?”

I said, “I been thinking about it.”

“I been thinking about it. I been thinking about it,” Wendall said back at me.

Wallace said, “Well, I guess she’ll be VIRGIN-ia Milner for a long time, then, if she’s waiting for our boy Warren here to do anything about it, huh, Wendall.”

Wendall agreed. And I agreed, too. I didn’t see any need to get mad about anything those two said. All I said was, “And she’ll be waiting even longer if she’s waiting on either one of you two faggots!”

They even laughed at that. Then they started calling out more page numbers, and we went on tearing through the annual some more, looking for more idiots to laugh at. Of course, we all had to go on a few Red Panty Alerts, too.

After lunch was over, I went on to my fourth period class, which is Earth Science. My teacher in there is Mr. Tweety, and he’s a nice guy. He’s seems pretty old, though. He was in World War II. Everybody knows that, because he talks about it all the time. In fact, whenever you don’t feel like listening to a bunch of science stuff on any particular day, all you gotta do is raise your hand at the beginning of class and ask him something about the war, and he’ll spend the rest of the period explaining it to you, and drawing maps and diagrams and stuff on the board to show you what he’s talking about. The next thing you know, the bell is ringing and it’s time to go on to your next class, and Mr. Tweety hasn’t said one word about science during the whole period. And it doesn’t seem to bother him any, either. He’ll just say, “So long, see ya tomorrow.” I don’t know why he teaches science, instead of a subject like history. I mean, he’s a good science teacher, when he gets around to talking about science, but he just seems to be more interested in history, especially World War II. And everybody would rather listen to his war stories, anyway, because he makes it interesting, because he knows a lot of the inside story of what was happening, having actually been there and all.

But for some reason nobody asked Mr. Tweedy any World War II questions, so he spent the whole period talking about soil erosion or something. To tell you the truth, I don’t really know what he talked about that day, because I spent the whole period staring at page 100 in my new Rustburg High School annual.

When fourth period was over, I was anxious to go on to my fifth period Art class, because it was about the only part of the day that I got to be around Ginny, like I was saying before. So I ran down to my locker to get the project I’d been working on for the past couple of weeks. Something I like about art class, besides being in there with Ginny, is you get to take your time when you’re working on a project. Even if it’s something simple, you don’t have to rush through it. And you also don’t have to work on the same thing everybody else is working on. Most of the class was doing charcoal drawings or water colors or something like that, but me and Ginny were working on pen and ink drawings. Mine was a drawing of Mark Twain, but it was a little different than just taking a pen and drawing him in black ink, though. First, I had completely painted over this big piece of white cardboard with black ink. Then I was taking this sharp pen-like thing, I think it’s called a stylus or something, and scratching lines into the painted cardboard, so that the white board underneath the ink would show through. So the whole thing was beginning to look more like a big negative that a photograph is made from, instead of a regular picture or drawing, because it was all black with white lines, instead of being all white with black lines, which was pretty cool. I’m not that artistic or anything, but it was turning out to look okay. Mark Twain ain’t all that hard to draw, really, when you get right down to it, because it’s easy to draw his bushy hair and eyebrows and his big mustache. I’d put a big cigar in his mouth, and had smoke rings rising up off the end of it and everything, but even adding stuff like that didn’t make it all that complicated. It wasn’t gonna win any big art awards or anything, but it was okay. Anybody that looked at it could probably tell it was supposed to be Mark Twain, if they’d ever seen a picture of Mark Twain before. It was at least that good.

Now Ginny, on the other hand, is artistic. She can draw just about anything or anybody she wants to. She was working on this pen and ink drawing of James Taylor, which she was copying from the cover of one of his albums called “Sweet Baby James.” James Taylor is her favorite singer. She really, really loves that guy. She carries an eight track tape of “Sweet Baby James” around in her pocket book all the time, and sometimes we listen to it during Art class. You see, Mr. Michaels, our art teacher, has this little portable eight track tape player that he sets up in our class, and he lets us bring in tapes to listen to while we’re working on our art projects. He thinks that listening to music can make you more creative. So a lot of the kids bring in their tapes, and they take turns playing them. Ginny gets Mr. Michaels to play her James Taylor tape as much as she can, which is right often, because James Taylor is kinda mellow, so nobody in the class really objects to listening to him a lot. It’s better to listen to somebody mellow, when you’re trying to draw or paint or something, because it doesn’t seem to distract you so much. I don’t have any eight track tapes that I can bring in, because we don’t have an eight track tape player at my house, but one time Danny Riley let me borrow one of his Doobie Brother tapes, and Mr. Michaels let me play that, which I thought was great. But the Doobies aren’t all that mellow, so a lot of the kids didn’t think it was so great to have them blaring away while they were trying to concentrate on their drawings and stuff. Of course, I like the Doobie Brothers better than anybody else, but they do tend to be distracting in the middle of an art class, I’ll admit that. So I don’t mind listening to stuff like James Taylor. He’s got this one song about a steamroller that I like a lot, so all in all I think he’s okay, especially since Ginny likes him so much. I’d probably listen to Perry Como, if that’s what Ginny wanted to listen to.

When I got to Art class, Ginny was already sitting at the table we always sit at, setting up her James Taylor stuff to work on, so I sat down and started setting up my Mark Twain stuff. I was copying him from a picture I found in a book in the library. Ginny smiled at me when she saw me, and said “Hi,” like she always does, and I said “Hi” back to her, like I always do.

Then she said, “Warren, tell me something, how come there isn’t a picture of you in the annual?”

I said, “I missed school the day they took class pictures. And I missed the make-up day, too.”

“Oh,” she said.

“But,” I said, “check this out.” I took out my annual and opened it up to page 100 and pointed to the foot in Miss Hiller’s picture. “See that foot? That’s my foot. I’m in Miss Hiller’s first period English class, you know.”

Ginny laughed when I showed it to her. She said, “I can’t believe it! That’s really funny, because last period a bunch of guys in my History class were going wild over Miss Hiller’s picture, and for some reason they were all wondering whose foot that was, like it was such a big deal. They kept going on and on about it. That’s really funny. Wow.”

“Well, now you can go back and tell them it’s my foot.” We were both sitting there admiring my foot in the picture.

“Maybe you’ll become famous around school now. Maybe everybody will start calling you Footboy or something.” She really started laughing at that.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said.

Just then Wendall came into the room and walked by our table and said, “Hey, Grubbie! Hey, VIRGINia! How’s it going?” He didn’t wait for an answer or anything. He went on over to the other side of the room and sat down at the table that he always sits at. He sat there winking over at us and giving me the thumbs-up sign and saying “Hey,” like he was the Fonz or something.

“What’s his problem,” Ginny said. “Why did he call me Virginia?”

I said, “He saw it in the annual, under your picture. He’s just being stupid, don’t pay him any mind.”

“Oh,” she said.

Me and Ginny got to working on our drawings, and talking about the annual, and all the stupid pictures that were in it, and a bunch of other stuff like that. Somebody had brought in a Jim Croce tape, so Mr. Michaels had that going in his tape player. We had heard it a bunch of times before, of course, but everybody liked it okay, because he’s kinda mellow, too. Ginny likes him pretty good, but not as much as she likes James Taylor. She didn’t know Jim Croce was dead until I told her one day. I think she liked him a little more after I told her that, because she kinda felt sorry for him. He was killed in a plane crash or something. I read about it at Danny’s house, in one of his Rolling Stone magazines.

Anyway, about halfway through class, Ginny was sitting there beside me, studying her James Taylor drawing, and looking real hard at the album cover she was copying it from, and out of the blue she stopped and turned to me and said, “Warren, have you ever thought about growing your hair out like James Taylor? You know, I think you’d look really cute with long hair. I mean, I think you’re cute already, but you’d look even cuter if you grew your hair out, you know what I mean?” She pointed at the picture of James Taylor she was looking at. “Don’t you think he looks really cool? Why don’t you do that?”

Man, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell her the real truth or anything, that I wanted more than anything in the world to have my hair as long as James Taylor’s, but that my mother wouldn’t let me have long hair because I was a Jehovah’s Witness and all. I didn’t know what to say. I was kinda caught off guard for a few seconds. Finally, I just said, “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Uh, my, uh, my father won’t let me. You see, he was in the Marines, and he thinks all guys should have really really short hair, like crew cuts and stuff. So this is as long as he’ll let me grow it. He thinks even this is too long. He’s all the time yelling at me to get a haircut, and calling me a hippie and stuff.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m lucky he doesn’t make me wear a crew cut, like he does. He’s always hassling me about it.” My Dad doesn’t wear a crew cut. He doesn’t have long hair, of course, but he doesn’t wear a crew cut. And he never yells at me about my hair, or anything else, really, unless he’s drunk or something and wants me to come downstairs and sing “I Remember the Year that Clayton Dulaney Died” for everybody, like he did yesterday when I got home from playing baseball with Danny. In fact, that’s about the only time he ever says anything to me. When he’s drunk, I mean. But I didn’t want to tell Ginny about all that.

Ginny didn’t say anything for a few minutes, then she said, “Yeah, I know what you mean. I guess that makes two of us. My Daddy is kinda strict with me, too, about some things. Like, he won’t let me get my ears pierced, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. He’s says I’m too young. He doesn’t realize that I’m 13 years old. He thinks I’m still just a little girl. Oh, that reminds me! My birthday is Friday, and Daddy said he might let me have a little party. I asked him about it last week, but that’s the way he is, he can never say yes or no right away when you ask him something, he has to say he’ll think about it. So right now he’s supposed to be thinking about it. If he lets me have a party, do you think you can come? I’m pretty sure he’s gonna say yes. Will you come?”

Man, oh, man. Now I was really caught off guard. First the hair thing, and now this. I couldn’t tell Ginny the truth, that I was a Jehovah’s Witness, and Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in celebrating birthdays. All I could manage to say was, “Uh, I don’t know, I guess, maybe. Friday, did you say? Your birthday is Friday?”

I’m such a dumb shit. Friday, did you say? Like I was gonna think about it for a minute and then say, No, I seem to have a prior engagement on Friday. Sorry.

Ginny said, “Yeah, it’ll probably start about seven o’clock, or somewhere around there. Till probably nine o’clock or so. I’m sure Daddy won’t let it last too long. Can you come?”

“Yeah, sure, I don’t see why not. Sounds good to me.”

“Wow. That’s great. But, like I said, Daddy hasn’t said I could have it yet. But I’m sure he’ll say yes. He’s pretty strict, but I have a way of sweet talking him into some things, so I’m not worried about it.” She was sitting there with this really happy smile on her face. “I can’t wait,” she kept saying, “I can’t wait!”

Me and Ginny talked some more and worked on our drawings a little while longer, and then pretty soon Mr. Michaels said it was time to pack up the art stuff because the period was almost over. So everybody put their stuff away, and then the bell that marks the end of fifth period rang, and me and Ginny got up and walked out the Art room door together, and then headed in opposite directions once we got out in the hall. Just as she was walking away, Ginny smiled at me back over her shoulder and said, “See ya tomorrow, Footboy!”

I went on down the hall toward my locker, to put my Mark Twain drawing away and pick up my softball glove, before I headed to my sixth period gym class. All I could think about was Ginny’s birthday party, and how I had just told her I’d go, and how there was no way in the world I’d be able to go, without really doing some serious lying and stuff, to get it past Mom that it would be okay for me to go somewhere Friday night. Mom wouldn’t want me going to a worldly person’s house in the first place, especially a girl’s house. And she’d really kill me if she thought I was going to somebody’s birthday party. About the only worldly person’s house I’m allowed to go to, besides some of my relatives, is Danny Riley’s, mainly because I’ve known him so long and because he lives just down the road from us, and because me and him have always played around together, since we were little kids, and now that we’ve gotten bigger, we play baseball together alot, like when his Dad takes us to Miller Park on Sunday afternoons, which I told you about before.

But going to Ginny’s house, for any reason, would be something else entirely. Even if I did come up with some lies good enough to get past Mom, I didn’t know how in the world I’d actually get to Ginny’s house, or even where her house was. I didn’t see how in the world I was gonna pull this one off. My only hope was that Ginny’s father would say she couldn’t have a party, then I’d be off the hook. But the strange thing is, I knew I’d feel pretty bad for Ginny if she couldn’t have her party, after seeing how excited she was about it and all. So even though it would help me out of my fix, if her father said no, I was still kinda hoping that he’d say yes and she’d get to have it after all. Which would just put me back into hot water, because I said I’d be there, when I knew good and well there was no way in hell I could go. Why is this kind of stuff always happening to me?

I was going through all this grief, just because Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in celebrating birthdays. So I guess now I better try to explain why they don’t celebrate birthdays. Well, the Truth That Leads to Eternal Life book says you shouldn’t celebrate birthdays because first, it’s wrong to exalt humans, and second, because birthday celebrations originally began as a pagan custom, and third, because the early Christians didn’t celebrate birthdays, so why should modern-day Christians do something the early Christians didn’t do? And fourth, the Bible doesn’t actually tell you not to celebrate birthdays, but the only two times it talks about birthday parties is when some followers of false religion were doing it, and things got out of hand, like the time when some woman wanted John the Baptist’s head cut off for a birthday present. Therefore, since the Bible only mentions birthday celebrations in a negative way, it must mean that Jehovah doesn’t want us to celebrate birthdays.

But that doesn’t make any sense really, to look at it like that, if you ask me, and I’ll tell you why: Because one day I was sitting in the middle of some stupid meeting at the Kingdom Hall, bored out of my brains, so I picked up my Aid to Bible Understanding book and started flipping around through it, looking for something that might be halfway interesting to look at. So I ended up reading the section in there about dogs, of all things. And pretty much what I found out was that everywhere dogs are mentioned in the Bible, it’s almost always in a negative way, like when it talks about dogs eating their own vomit, and licking people’s ulcers and sores, and lapping up blood all over the place, and stuff like that. But even though all that negative stuff about dogs is found all over the Bible, Jehovah’s Witnesses are allowed to have as many dogs as they want to have. There are no Witness rules against having dogs.

And it ain’t just dogs, either, if you stop and think about it. It’s chickens, too. Remember the time where Jesus said that Peter was gonna disown him three times in one night, before a cock crowed, and it actually happened? Well, disowning Jesus was a pretty negative thing for Peter to do, if you ask me, but the Witnesses sure don’t look down on chickens because a crowing cock was involved when Peter denied Jesus. The Witnesses can eat all the chicken they want to. So it just seems to me that if they were gonna be consistent about it, if they won’t let you celebrate your birthday, then they shouldn’t let you have anything to do with dogs, either, or let you raise chickens, or eat chickens, or eat eggs, even. But I guess they never bothered to look at it like that. I’ve thought about writing an official letter to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and asking them about it, or maybe asking Brother Harris or some other know-it-all at the Kingdom Hall to explain to me the difference between birthdays and dogs and chickens, when it comes to how they’re mentioned in the Bible and all, but I already know the answer I’d get. They’d just tell me to shut up and quit trying to start trouble. Of course, they wouldn’t say it exactly like that. They’d put it that I was reading too much into the scriptures, that I wasn’t showing the proper appreciation for the Truth, which is revealed to us through the Faithful and Discreet Slave, also known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. That’s the Witness way of saying shut up and quit trying to start trouble.

If you ask me, if Jehovah didn’t want us to celebrate birthdays, he’d have it in the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount or the First or Second Letter to the Corinthians or somewhere like that, right there in black and white, “Thou shalt not celebrate anyone’s birthday, not even Jesus’s.”

I got my softball glove out of my locker and headed for my sixth period, which is gym class, which is just another big pain in my ass. Most guys probably like gym, but I don’t. The problem with it is, you can’t just go to gym class and jump right into doing whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing, like playing football or basketball or softball or whatever. First you gotta go through the trouble of going all the way into the locker room and changing into your gym suit, which wastes at least ten minutes or so. Then you waste a bunch more time waiting around for the coach to take the roll to see who’s there and who’s bothered to dress out for class. Then when you finally do get around to playing whatever sport it is you’re supposed to be playing, it only lasts about 20 minutes, at the most, especially if you gotta march outside and all the way down to the athletic field that’s back behind the school, because just when you’re getting started into a game of football or softball or whatever, it’s close to time for the period to be over, so you gotta march all the way back to the gym and change out of your gym suit and back into your regular clothes, which of course takes another ten minutes or so. Going through all that seems like an awful lot of trouble and wasted time, if you ask me, for what little bit you get out of it.

A lot of the guys don’t even bother dressing out half the time. But Coach Lankford takes points off your total grade for every day that you don’t dress out, so I always have to dress out because I can’t afford to lose the extra points. You see, gym class is also combined with Health class, so in actuality you really only do gym stuff half the time, because every other week you have to go into a classroom and study Health stuff. We’ve spent half the time this year studying a first-aid manual, and having tests and quizzes out of it every so often, which is why I can’t afford to lose any points for not dressing out for gym, because I haven’t done too well on those first-aid tests and quizzes. The whole reason for that is because of something else that’s weird about me, that I’ll try to explain now.

Well, you see, I don’t do too well in first-aid class because most of it deals with stuff like what you’re supposed to do when somebody is burned real bad, or has gone into some kind of shock, or is cut up and bleeding all over the place, or has a broken leg and the bone is sticking out through the skin, and all kinds of gory stuff like that. And the truth is, I’m too squeamish to deal with that kind of thing. I don’t want to read about it, I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t even want to think about it. Because when I do read about it or hear about it or think about it, I usually start to feeling real woozy, like I’m gonna faint or throw up or something.

In fact, one time I did faint in the middle of a class. It wasn’t during first-aid class, though. It happened a couple of years ago when I was in the seventh grade, when our Health class was studying about internal organs, or about how blood moves through the body, or about something like that. One day I was listening to what the teacher was teaching, and out of nowhere I was starting to feel a little light-headed and shaky, but it was almost time for us to stop and go to lunch, so I thought I could make it to lunch period, if I could just sit still and hold on a little bit longer. But then some kid raised his hand and started talking about his uncle or somebody that had had a terrible accident and had gotten his arm or his leg cut off on some farm somewhere out in the country and they found him out in the middle of some corn field, underneath his tractor bleeding to death. And the stupid kid kept going on and on with all the gory details of how they had to pull the tractor off the poor guy and then hunt around all over the place for his missing arm or leg or whatever it was that got cut off, because they were gonna try to rush him to the hospital forty miles away and have it sewn back on or something, and in the meantime he’s gone into shock and is out of blood. After a couple of minutes of listening to all that, I could just feel myself losing it, because I started getting clammy all over, and then I started hearing this strange high-pitched whistle going off inside my head, getting louder and louder. I didn’t know what to do, so I decided I’d better go up and ask the teacher if I could leave the room, real quiet like. I was gonna say that I had to go use the bathroom. I didn’t want her or any of the other kids to really know why I was having to leave. So I stood up and took one step away from my desk, and I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew I had hit the floor and was stumbling around on my hands and knees, trying to pick myself up again and get back into my seat. Miss Kiner, my teacher, had let out a big scream when she first saw me fall down, so all the other kids turned around and were watching me flop around all over the place, trying to get up off the floor. Miss Kiner ran back to my desk, where I had somehow managed to sit myself back down, kinda halfway slumped over the top of it, and she shook me and was yelling, “Warren, Warren. Are you alright?” But I just looked up at her like she was crazy or something. So she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out of my seat and out of the room, and down the hall to the principal’s office, where somebody called my Mom and told her that it looked like I’d had some kind of epileptic seizure or something. Mom told them I didn’t have epilepsy, but they told her she ought to come down to the school and get me anyway. So Mom came and got me. She asked me what had happened, and I said I was just feeling bad, that’s all. I never told her or Miss Kiner or anyone else the real reason why I had passed out, because I didn’t want anybody to know what a big wimp I was. Of course the hardest part of the whole ordeal was having to go back to school the next day, because I just knew all the other kids were gonna be asking me a bunch of questions about what had happened, or they’d be making fun of me or something like that. But the next day, believe it or not, nobody said a word. It was like it had never even happened. Which was fine by me, because I was really embarrassed about the whole thing, to say the least.

Passing out in Miss Kiner’s seventh grade Health class kinda marked the beginning of my being a real wimp about squeamish things. From then on it seems like it’s only gotten worse, no matter how much I try to fight it. That’s why I don’t do so good in first-aid class now, like I was saying, because I can hardly deal with what I’m supposed to be learning. Nowadays, when I’m in Health class and the discussion gets kinda gory, and I start getting that clammy feeling and start hearing that whistle going off inside my head, the only thing I can do is try to force myself not to listen to what’s going on. That’s the hardest thing in the world to do, because when you’re trying not to listen to something, believe me, you hear everything. Sometimes I’ll lay my head down on my desk and cover my ears with the sides of my arms so I can’t hear what’s being said. But I don’t like to do that a lot because then it looks like I’m not paying attention, or that I’m asleep or something, so I’ve developed this trick where I’ll take a book and turn to some page somewhere in the middle of it, and starting at the bottom of the page, I’ll read each word backwards, and concentrate real hard on what the letters in the words are, and study how the shape of each letter looks on the paper, and count all the e’s on the page, or all the f’s or g’s, or some other letter. I’ll do stupid things like that, anything I can think of to do, just to distract me so that I don’t hear what’s going on around me. Doing that trick with the book, reading backwards and all, usually works pretty good. But I’ve still come real close to passing out again, a couple of times. Real close.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, but I just can’t figure out why I’m like this, why I’m so squeamish and wimpy. I honestly think it comes from me being a Jehovah’s Witness, somehow, because I usually only have these little spells when I hear people talking about blood and guts, especially blood. You see, the Witnesses are obsessed with blood. You can’t hardly pick up a Watchtower magazine or any Witness book without finding some big discussion about blood. And they have talks about the blood issue all the time at the Kingdom Hall. That’s what they call it: the blood issue. I’ve come close to passing out in the middle of a meeting at the Kingdom Hall lots of times, listening to one of them blood issue talks. In fact, I’ve had to use my book trick at the Kingdom Hall a lot more times than I’ve had to use it at school, that’s for sure. In case you didn’t know, the blood issue mainly has to do with blood transfusions. The Witnesses are totally against people having blood transfusions, because as far as they’re concerned, having a blood transfusion is the same thing as actually eating blood, and the Bible says it’s against God’s law to eat blood in any way, shape, or form, because a person’s actual soul is inside his blood. And I guess that’s the part that’s always been sickening to me, when they go on and on about somebody eating somebody else’s blood, eating their soul. Anyway, getting a blood transfusion is the biggest no-no in the whole world for somebody that’s a Jehovah’s Witness. You do that, and your ass is grass, as far as they’re concerned. It may seem like a little thing to a normal person, but to a Jehovah’s Witness it’s a really big deal.

I know I’ve gotten side-tracked again, talking about this blood issue crap, but I was just trying to explain the reason why I have to dress out for gym all the time, which is because I can’t afford to lose points from my gym grade for not dressing out, because my first-aid grades haven’t been very good, because I almost come close to passing out all the time in first-aid class, or when I’m trying to do some studying in my first-aid book for a big test or a quiz, because I’m such a squeamish little wimpy geek. Now you know.

I was headed into the locker room to change into my gym suit, and I had gone into the little hallway that leads from the gym into the locker room, and my mind must have still been on the problem I had just gotten myself into during fifth period, of how was I gonna manage to go to Ginny’s birthday party, or how was I gonna get out of it without hurting Ginny’s feelings or having her find out the real reason for why I couldn’t go in the first place. Soon as I opened the door to go into the locker room, who should pop up right there in the doorway but Lamar Jackson, which really caught me off guard, because my mind had been on Ginny and her birthday party, like I said, instead of it being on the fact that Lamar Jackson was in my sixth period gym class and that I needed to be on the lookout for him, to avoid getting in his way at all costs.

Well, Lamar just stood there glaring at me. I tried to move around him, to go on into the locker room, but he kept moving over in the same direction I was trying to pass, blocking me. He just kept doing it, bumping me back every time I moved to one side to go around. He must have bumped me back about ten times, at least. I was really starting to get worried that I was in for it, that he was gonna haul off and pop me one, because it was just me and him standing there in that little hall way, so nobody would have been around to see him do it. But finally, he just pushed me out of the way real hard and laughed and said, “It’s coming. Don’t worry, it’s coming. Witness boy.” Then he strutted on down the hallway and out into the gym.

Man, him being in the doorway and catching me off guard and bumping me around like that and all, well, that kinda shook me up pretty good, and I was shaking by the time I got to my gym locker, so bad I almost couldn’t get the combination of my locker right. I didn’t know what he was talking about when he said It’s coming, it’s coming, but I knew it couldn’t be good.

Somehow I managed to get my gym suit on, and then I ran outside, and we played softball until it was time to come back in and change back into our regular clothes, which means we were out there only about 25 or 30 minutes, at the most. One good thing, Lamar Jackson didn’t play softball that day, which was fine with me. He didn’t dress out, either. Him and a bunch of the other guys in our class just sat around on the bleachers outside and talked or played cards or something, while the rest of us were playing softball. Coach Lankford doesn’t really know who does what, because he hardly ever comes outside to see what’s going on. After he takes the roll and checks off whether you’re dressed out or not, he sends everybody outside, and then he goes back and sits around in his office or just hangs around the gym or something. That’s one of the reason’s Lamar Jackson can get away with harassing me all the time during gym, especially when we’re doing something out on the athletic field, because there’s nobody around like Coach Lankford to stop it. But on the particular day that I’m telling you about, which was Monday, Lamar didn’t mess with me any more once we got outside. It was just that little bit at the beginning of the period in the hallway to the locker room where he blocked my way and then told me I had it coming. The rest of the period after that went okay. I only got to bat once during the softball game, and I hit a really nice line drive single right up the middle. And I made a couple of easy catches in centerfield.

Well, sixth period is the last period of the day, so when it was finally over, I went on out to the front of the school where all the buses are lined up waiting to take everybody home, and got on stupid bus number thirty-one. I’ve already told you how much I hate riding the bus everyday, because it’s so boring, and it takes forever to get anywhere, and it’s so noisy in the afternoons with all the stupid little kids yelling and screaming and carrying on, so I won’t go into another long spiel about all that again.

I sat down in the seat beside Danny, like I always do, and after about a million years everybody else that rides bus number thirty-one finally made it on there, and old man Dobbs got the show on the road. Me and Danny were riding along, looking at our annuals, and talking about how lame it was, and laughing at all the idiots in there who thought they were hot stuff, and so on. I showed Danny my foot in Miss Hiller’s picture on page 100, and he thought that was pretty cool. After we finished laughing at everybody in the annual, we got to talking about baseball, which is what we usually talk about all the time on the bus, and of course Danny started giving me a hard time about Pete Rose not getting any hits yesterday, which is what I knew Danny was gonna do, already.

“Well, it looks like old Pete’s getting washed up,” Danny said. He says that to me every time Rose goes 0 for 4 or 0 for 5.

“What do ya mean, washed up?”

“Well, 0 for 5 again yesterday. It just seems to me he’s been doing that a lot lately.”

Of course Danny was saying all that just to get me going. He knows that Pete Rose is my favorite player, because he’s a singles hitter, like me, not a homerun hitter, like Danny. What’s so ridiculous about it all is, Danny actually likes Pete Rose, too. Not as much as me, but he still likes him. He just pretends not to, just to see if he can get me mad sometimes. That’s why I don’t pay him any mind, when he tries to get me going on how washed up Pete Rose is.

Danny sat there waiting for me to say something back, but I didn’t say anything. I acted like I was gonna ignore him. Then finally after a couple of minutes Danny said, “Yep, he’s about washed up, if you ask me.”

I didn’t want to get into it, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Listen,” I said, “first of all, Pete Rose ain’t old enough to be washed up already, alright? And second of all, you know as well as I do that he always starts out the season slow, then picks up at the end of the year. Okay?”

“Oh yeah, I must’ve forgot about that.”

“Yeah, you must’ve. And did you also forget who won the batting title year before last? Did you? It was Peter Edward Rose, that’s who won it. Okay? No way he’s washed up. No way. How can you say that? You’re full of crap.”

“Maybe so, maybe so. But let me ask you something, because I can’t quite seem to remember it myself. What I’m having a hard time remembering is, what did old Pete hit last year?”

“Uh, I don’t remember either, exactly.”

“Umm, that’s odd. And here I thought you were the expert on Pete Rose, knew everything there was to know about him, and all. But you can’t quite remember, exactly, what he hit last year.”

“Two-eighty-four. BUT, he led the league in runs scored and doubles. So there.”

“So there! Two-eighty-four! So there!”

“He had an off year at the plate, so what. Most guys would kill to hit 284. I’d like to see your ass hit 284 sometime, if you think it’s so easy.”

“Hey, I never said it was easy. I never said I could do it, did I? But this ain’t me we’re talking about, this is Pete Rose, Mr. Charlie Hustle, your main man.”

“Look, all I know is, he hit over 300, nine years in a row. And last year he only missed doing it again by 16 lousy points. Eleven more hits during the course of the season, and he would have made it again. Eleven more hits. Sixteen lousy points. And just for that, you think he’s washed up. Come on, get real.”

“Hey, I hear what you’re saying, I just hope it ain’t no trend he’s developing, that’s all. Because first it’s 284, then maybe it’ll be 274, then it’s gonna be 244 or something, then the next thing you know, he’s an old fart in right field in Cleveland or somewhere, humping as hard as he can hump, just to make it to 3000 before he has to retire. That would be really sad, to see that happen to Pete Rose, your hero.”

Neither one of us said anything for a couple of minutes. Then Danny said, “You better keep an eye on him, that’s all.”

“Aw, shut up, will ya?”

That made Danny laugh real hard, because he knew he’d gotten to me. But he let it drop after that, and we went back to looking at our annuals again. Then a little while later he said, “Oh yeah, guess what? Dad told me last night that there’s a guy he works with that’s got an old ‘65 VW he wants to sell, for $400. It needs a couple of little things done to it, like tuning up and a brake job and stuff like that. But he says it still runs okay, for the most part. Listen to this, Dad said he’s gonna buy it and stick it in the back yard, and me and him can work on fixing it up this summer. And then I can drive it after I get my license, which will be when I turn 16 in August. It’ll be my car. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds cool.”

“Yeah. That means next year I won’t have to ride this damn bus. And you can catch a ride with me, too, if you want to.”

“Alright!” Man, I’ll tell you, that sounded great to me. That meant I’d only have to ride the school bus for the rest of that week, and for the last three days of school the next week, which was just seven more days, all together. That was definitely good news, as far as I was concerned.

I was pretty happy when Danny told me I could ride with him to school next year in his new VW. Then I got to thinking about what next year is probably gonna be like. The way I see it, school will probably be starting some time the last week of August or the first week of September. That means I’ll at least get to ride to school with Danny up until about the first part of October, which is when Armageddon is supposed to be coming, and then it won’t matter one way or the other, because there won’t be any school for me or anybody else after that. Thinking about it that way was kinda weird. It meant all in all I only had a little over a month left of going to school, in this system of things, anyway. And then I got to thinking about what Danny had just said about Pete Rose having to really hump if he was gonna get 3000 career hits, before he really was washed up and couldn’t play any more. And then it dawned on me: this is the last year there’s ever gonna be major league baseball, which is a really depressing thought, especially for somebody that loves baseball as much as I do. That meant that Pete is gonna have to get about 600 hits this year, if he’s gonna make it to 3000 before Armageddon comes, which is really an impossible thing to do of course, because he’ll probably not get many more than 600 at bats all year, and nobody can get a hit every time they come up to bat, not even Ty Cobb. And even if Pete Rose could do something as impossible as getting 600 hits in a row, it won’t really matter for much, in the grand scheme of things. So old Pete is just out of luck, I guess. Armageddon is gonna cut him down, just like it’s gonna cut me down, and everybody else that isn’t a real Jehovah’s Witness.

Well, thinking about all that crap had be feeling kinda down again, the same way I felt last night right before I went to bed, when I was reading all that stuff in Slaughterhouse-Five about the bombing of Dresden. But right as the bus was getting to my house, Danny said something that cheered me up a little bit. Just as I was standing up to get off the bus, he told me to come on down to his house that afternoon, as soon as I could, because him and his dad had made a magazine run on Saturday.

“You know what that means,” Danny said.

“Right. I’ll be down soon as I can,” I said. Then I got off the bus.

Well, I wanted to get down to Danny’s house as soon as I could, but first I knew I had to go downstairs and take my pissy sheets out of the washing machine and put them over into the dryer. So when I got into the house, I ran downstairs real quick and did all that, and then I ran up to my room and got my baseball glove. I hadn’t seen Mom when I first came in, but when I went back to the kitchen on my way out, she was in there, so I said, “Hi, Mom, I’m going down to Danny’s house and throw the baseball around for a little while, I’ll be back before supper.”

I had the door halfway open, and she said, “Just a minute, young man.” So I had to stop and see what the hell she was wanting. And of course she had to start in on me exactly where she left off that morning, when she was all determined that I had to read the daily text in the 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses before I went off to school.

“Ma’am?”

“Before you go anywhere, I want you to tell me what the daily text was about this morning.”

“Okay. Well, let me think.” I stood there scratching my head and looking up at the ceiling, like it was gonna come to me at any second, but the truth was I had no idea what the text was about, of course. Finally I said, “I don’t remember exactly. I think it was about something Jesus had said, or something like that. The bus got here before I really had a chance to read it all. I was reading it, but the bus came.”

“And you thought you were gonna get away with not reading it today, right?”

“No, Ma’am, I just didn’t have time to finish it this morning, because the bus was coming and all, and then I just forget about it, when I first got home, because I had to put my sheets in the dryer and all, that’s all.”

“Well, I want to be sure you get it read. All of it. So before you go running off anywhere to play baseball with your worldly friends, why don’t you just take a few minutes and stand there and start at the top and read it again. All of it. To me. Out loud.”

She picked the Yearbook up off the table and handed it to me, then she took a seat at the kitchen table.

“Well, I’m waiting,” she said.

So I put down my baseball glove and opened the Yearbook to Monday, June 2, and started reading it out loud:

You believe there is one God, do you? You are doing quite well. And yet the demons believe and shudder. James 2:19.

Evidently James found that some did not have a faith that was alive, that was active, one that moved a person to show genuine love toward his Christian brothers and to share in producing more disciples of Jesus Christ. He points out that the demons believe there is a God. Owing to their depravity, these fallen angels brought havoc to the earth, and their hybrid offspring no doubt had much to do with the violence that filled the earth in those days. These demons believed there is one God, they believed that he exists, and they knew of the Son of God also. (Matt. 8:28-32) But because they do not do the works of God they shudder at the thought of what that means for them. So if one’s belief in Jehovah God is as far as one’s faith goes, then one is not much better off than the demons.

That was the text for the day. When I was finished reading it, Mom said, “Now Warren, do you believe in Jehovah God?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And do you believe in the Son of God?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And do you remember the scripture in James that says ‘faith without works is dead’?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And do you want to be better off than one of the demons?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Then, while you’re throwing your baseball around down at Danny’s today, I want you to also be thinking about how the text you just read has a special application to you, personally, and what you need to do about it. The time is short, son.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” I put the Yearbook back down on the kitchen table, picked up my baseball glove, ran out the door and got on my ten-speed and pedaled for Danny’s house as fast as I could pedal.

All I could think about was getting down to Danny’s as quick as I could, to find out what new dirty magazine he had. That’s what he was talking about on the bus when he said him and his dad had made a magazine run on Saturday. You see, every so often Danny and his dad go down to Phillip’s News Stand, which is in downtown Lynchburg, and they buy a bunch of magazines. Mr. Riley reads a lot of detective magazines and car magazines. Danny usually gets some baseball magazines and Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News and stuff like that, and sometimes Rolling Stone. And believe it or not, his dad also buys him a dirty magazine once in a while, like Playboy or Penthouse. Mr. Riley is definitely cooler than most parents, that’s for sure. I can’t imagine my Dad giving me a dirty magazine. Mom would die. I don’t know if Danny’s mother knows about his Playboys and Penthouses or not. When he first started getting them, which was last year sometime, his dad told him to keep them in his room and to not sit around the house reading them or leave them laying around for his mom or his sister to see, or anything. So maybe it’s just a secret thing between Danny and his dad. It must be nice to have a secret with your dad.

I definitely didn’t want to be thinking about the demons in the daily text, like Mom wanted me to. The demons are the last thing I want to think about, ever. They scare the shit out of me. There’s a chapter in the Truth book called “Are There Wicked Spirits?” that tells all about Satan the Devil and his wicked demons, how they got their start in disobedience to Jehovah, way back there in the Garden of Eden, and how they now secretly rule all the worldly governments, and so on. It also talks about how the demons can trick you into thinking that you’re talking to the dead, during seances, and through the use of ouiji boards, and stuff like that. I’ll tell you the truth, that kind of stuff really scares me.

The Witnesses are always talking about how you gotta really be on your guard against the demons, because they’re out to mislead us in any way they can, because we’re the only ones who have the true religion and all, and the demons want us all to fall away and be destroyed at Armageddon, the same way they’re gonna be destroyed, sooner or later. The way they try to get into your life is first through some possession you have, like a book or an article of clothing or something like that. Say for instance, your cousin or somebody went to a seance and spoke to some dead relative, and then a couple of months later that cousin of yours gave you a shirt he didn’t want anymore, and it turns out it was the same shirt he was wearing when he went to that seance. Well, the same demon that spoke to your cousin during the seance could somehow be possessing that shirt, and now there you are with it, and you’re wearing it around and keeping it in your closet and stuff, and that demon can now start doing all kinds of scary stuff to take over your life and scare you away from the Truth. So you might come home one day and find all your furniture flying around your house, or your dog actually talking to your cat in the English language or something, and you know right away that demonism is your problem. But you have no idea that it all came about because of that shirt your cousin gave you. And until you figured it out, all that weird stuff would keep on happening more and more, until it drove you out of your mind, and you got so crazy you killed yourself, which is what the demon was trying to get you to do in the first place, just so there would be one less Jehovah’s Witness in the world, one less person who knows the Truth, one less person able to teach someone else about the Truth. That’s how bad Satan and the demons want to stop the Witnesses from spreading the Truth. You really gotta keep an eye out for them demons.

Thank God nothing demonic has ever happened to me, really. There was this one time I thought I was starting to get a little demonized, though, because of this really bad dream I had. It happened one Thursday night, a couple of years ago. At the meeting that night, there had been a part where people could give personal experiences and stuff, which is something they do every once in a while, but not at every Thursday night meeting. Anyway, Sister Hewitt had just come back from visiting some of her family out in California, and she was telling about another Sister she heard about out there in California. Sister Hewitt said that this particular Sister in California had a mother who wasn’t in the Truth, and in fact was strongly opposed to the Truth. The mother also had been involved in astrology and ouiji boards and stuff like that. And then the mother died, and the Sister got to have her dead mother’s big new color TV set. So one night the Sister was watching some show on that fancy new TV, and everything was going along just fine. But then out of nowhere all of a sudden the show she was watching disappeared off the screen, and a bunch of demons showed up on the screen and started yelling at her to give up the Truth. Well, that scared the Sister pretty bad. She didn’t know what to do, so she tried changing the channel to see if there was anything else on, but the demons were on every channel she turned to. So she turned the TV off, thinking that would make them go away. Well, that worked at first, but then the TV turned itself back on, all by itself, and this time she could see her dead mother on the TV, crying and screaming and begging her daughter to give up the Truth, because that was the only way her dead mother would be released from the torment in hell. Now this really scared the Sister watching the TV, seeing her dead mother like that and all. She tried and tried, but she still couldn’t get the TV to turn off, so she reached down and jerked the plug right out of the wall socket. But the damn TV kept on playing anyway, even without electricity running to it. Well, the Sister was really, really frantic by now, and she realized she had to get that TV out of the house, that was the only way to get them demons to stop harassing her. But the TV was too big for her to carry by herself, and she lived all alone and wasn’t married or anything. So she ran downstairs or out to her garage or somewhere and got an axe and came back and started attacking the TV, whacking away at it while the demons were still on the screen, howling at her and cursing her, and her mom was still on there begging her to leave the Truth, to save her from hellfire. Finally, the Sister hit that TV so hard that the picture tube exploded and sent glass and sparks flying all over the room. She kept beating it and beating it until the screams and hollers went away, and the whole thing ended up being just a smoldering heap of broken pieces of glass and metal and plastic and wires and stuff. So she picked up all those pieces and put them into a big box, and dragged the box outside and poured gasoline on top of it, and set it on fire, and while it was burning she ran back inside the house and grabbed everything else she now had that had belonged to her mother before she died, like some old clothes and dishes and pictures and stuff, and brought those things outside and tossed them into the fire. And the whole time the fire was roaring, she said she could still hear the demons and her mother screaming at her, and they didn’t stop screaming until the fire had burned up everything that would burn. Then she took a garden hose and sprayed down what was left there, the ashes and charred metal and melted plastic crap.

Well, everybody at the Hall that night that heard Sister Hewitt tell about that California Sister’s experience agreed it was a fine lesson in how all us Witnesses need to be really careful to avoid accepting gifts and inheriting stuff from our worldly relatives, because you never know when you might end up with something that’s been demonized. What makes it so hard is you can’t tell just by looking at something, if you’re gonna have a problem with it. I guess you never can tell until it’s too late.

After hearing that story, I went home that night and dreamed that the demons were chasing me down Fort Avenue. I was running as hard as I could, trying to get to the Kingdom Hall, because I knew Jehovah God wouldn’t allow the demons to enter the Kingdom hall, so I’d be safe if only I could make it that far. But when I got to where the Kingdom Hall was supposed to be, it wasn’t there anymore. There was just an empty lot. So I kept on running, with the demons right behind me, and they were catching up fast. I knew my ass was gonna be grass when they caught me, too. Then all of a sudden, during this dream, while I was running my head off down Fort Avenue, I actually realized that I was stuck in the middle of a bad dream, that none of it was real, that I could get away from those demons if I could only get myself to wake up. So while I was running and trying to keep away from the demons, I started yelling to myself, “Wake up! Wake up!” And just as the demons were about to grab me, I woke up.

But now comes the really scary part: I didn’t really wake up, I only dreamed that I had woke up. So I was still dreaming that I was laying there in my bed, happy and relieved as hell that I had gotten myself to wake up, and all of a sudden, the demons busted right through my bedroom wall grabbing at me and yelling, “We got you now, Witness boy!” Well, that scared me so bad in my dream, that I really did wake up, for real this time. I was laying there breathing like all get out, and my heart pounding so hard I could hear it. I balled up into a knot under my covers, afraid to even open my eyes, because I couldn’t be sure if I really was awake, or just dreaming that I was dreaming I was awake again.

Jesus, that dream almost scared me to death. When I realized I really was awake and not dreaming anymore, I prayed to Jehovah and begged Him to keep me safe from Satan and the demons, and I promised Him that from then on, starting first thing in the morning, I was gonna turn over a new leaf and become a real Jehovah’s Witness, and start doing all the things I knew I was supposed to be doing. That was a couple of years ago, like I said. My new leaf didn’t last very long. It never does.

When I got down to Danny’s house, he was in his room listening to his stereo and reading a new Baseball Digest magazine.

I came in and said, “Which one did you get?”

He pointed to a pile of magazines on his floor, and said, “Playboy.”

I said, “Aw, man, Playboy? Why Playboy? Why didn’t you get Penthouse?”

“I didn’t see any,” he said, “they musta been sold out or something.”

I said, “That figures.”

I sat down on the floor and picked up the new Playboy and started looking through it, trying to find the good parts, but there wasn’t that much to see, really. Yeah, the girl in the centerfold was okay, but she wasn’t all that great. There were a few pictures of another girl who was supposed to be some kind of world champion surfer or something. At least they had her riding naked on a surfboard and stuff, but she wasn’t all that hot, either. Then there was a section of pictures that focused mainly on girl’s legs, which was pretty stupid if you ask me, because you can see girl’s plain old legs just about anywhere you go, so why would you want to buy a Playboy magazine to see them? Everybody knows you look at a dirty magazine because you want to see the whole girl naked, not just her legs or just her ass, but her boobs and her pussy, too. That’s one reason why Penthouse is about a hundred times better than Playboy, because Penthouse shows you everything you’re dying to see. I mean, when Playboy gets around to showing you what’s between a girl’s legs, they usually just have her standing around looking out a window or something, and all you can really see is the hair that’s down there between her legs. But with Penthouse, man, they go all out. They’ll have the girl thrown across a bed or a couch or a motorcycle or something, with her legs spread wide open. That’s what you want to see.

Another thing that makes Penthouse about a hundred times better, besides the fact that you actually get to see more of the girl’s pussy, is the letters section. That’s where people write in and talk about all the different kinds of screwing they been doing. Danny says that most of them are made up, because they’re usually so far-fetched and all. He’s probably right about that. It’s usually stuff like some college guy going on about this one night where he went to see his girlfriend in her dorm room, and he ended up having sex with her and about twelve of her roommates, all at the same time. Or some girl will write in and talk about how beautiful and hot and sexy she is and how big and perfect her titties are and how she’s such a nymphomaniac that she’ll screw anybody, anywhere, anytime, and then she’ll tell about the time she went to a grocery store in the middle of the night, to buy a pack of chewing gum, and all she was wearing was a pair of cut-offs that barely covered her tight little ass and a t-shirt with no bra underneath, and she got to flirting with some cute guy working over in the canned meat section, and of course one thing lead to another, and so she ended up screwing all the stock clerks in the whole store, one by one, on top of the checkout stand. And afterwards they let her have the chewing gum for free.

I know Danny’s probably right, that all those letters are just a load of crap, but we like to read them anyway, mainly because after you’ve read about a thousand of them, you kinda get the idea of what it is you’re supposed to do when you screw. I mean, if I ever get the chance to screw a girl anytime soon, which I’m sure I won’t, because Armageddon’s coming so soon and all, but if I ever do get the chance, I’m pretty sure I’ll know what to do, how to go about it and all, because of all the stuff I’ve picked up from reading the letters in Penthouse. I might not be a real expert or anything, because I’ve never actually done it yet, but at least I know you’re supposed to kiss and lick a girl all over and rub them up a lot first, before you go jumping right into the actual screwing part. I know that much at least.

Anyway, me and Danny used to think that Playboy was a pretty cool magazine, until he got a Penthouse one time. Now we both think Playboy is pretty lame. So we prefer Penthouse, when he can get them. But I guess Playboy is better than nothing.

So I was looking at the Playboy, wondering why it didn’t have a letters section, when I remembered something that happened to me on Saturday that I was anxious to tell Danny about.

“Hey, Danny, guess what? You’re not gonna believe what happened to me Saturday.”

“What?”

“Well, you know how I cut my Uncle Virgil’s grass every week, and a bunch of his neighbor’s yards, too?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, Saturday, I was down at his house cutting everybody’s grass, like I always do. And I had just finished cutting Mr. Puckette’s. He’s this old crippled guy across the street from Uncle Virgil. I feel sorry for him because he has to wear these metal braces on his legs and walk with crutches, and he doesn’t have any family or anything, so I always try to cut his grass for free, but he always makes me take fifty cents, which ain’t much really, but he’s probably poor as hell, so maybe that’s all he can spare, but I’d feel better if he’d just let me do it for nothing, because he’s cripple and all—“

“Okay, okay, you cut the cripple guy’s grass, you don’t have to tell me everything there is to know about his life story, you know. Get on with it.”

“Okay. So I always cut Mr. Puckette’s yard last, and when I’m finished I always just roll the lawn mower back across the street and into Uncle Virgil’s shed in the backyard. So Saturday I was taking the mower around back, and Uncle Virgil came back there and told me to wait a minute, I wasn’t through yet. And I said, ‘Yeah I am, I just finished old man Puckette’s.’ But Uncle Virgil said, ‘I got you an extra job this week. Mrs. Harrelson next door wants you to cut her yard today, too. So fill up the mower again, and push it on over there and do hers. Should only take you twenty or thirty minutes. When you get finished, just knock on her front door and she’ll pay you.’ And then Uncle Virgil winked at me.”

“He what?”

“He winked at me.”

“He winked at you? What the hell for?”

“Just wait, I’ll get to that. Anyway, I thought that was pretty great, having an extra yard to cut, being able to earn even more money than I thought I was going to, so I filled the mower up with gas and pushed it down the sidewalk and around the big fence that runs between Mrs. Harrelson’s and Uncle Virgil’s yards. It was the first time I’d ever seen her backyard, because you can’t see it from Uncle Virgil’s side, because of the fence and all, and because her yard sits up higher than his does. Anyway, it wasn’t that big a backyard, so I knew it wasn’t gonna take me very long. So I started down at the lower edge of the yard, the same way I always start when I’m cutting Uncle Virgil’s, and I got to cutting away, back and forth, back and forth, making my way up the yard towards the house, and I wasn’t paying any attention to much of anything, just keeping my eyes down on the lines I was cutting in the grass. Then all of a sudden, I looked up and noticed that somebody was laying on a lawn chair on the little patio that’s right behind the house. I figured it was Mrs. Harrelson. She was laying out there in the sun, laying on her belly in a really, really skimpy bathing suit.”

“Alright, Warren! What’d she look like? How old was she?”

“She looked pretty damn good from where I was. I couldn’t tell how old she was, really, the way she was laying and all. But I guess she was a least about forty or something.”

“Okay, keep going, keep going.”

“So anyway, I kept cutting and cutting back and forth, and trying to keep my head looking down and straight ahead at the grass, but also trying to shift my eyes to the side as much as I could, every time I turned the mower around, to see what there was to see. I was cutting on up the yard, getting closer and closer to the patio, close enough to where I could start checking out her ass a little bit and all. But when I got to within like ten feet of her, she must have thought the mower was too loud or was gonna blow grass on her or something, because she got up off her lounge chair and made a big show of putting on this little robe that she’d been laying on the whole time, and she went on into the back door of the house. And listen to this: That wasn’t a really, really skimpy bathing suit she was wearing, either. I could tell that as soon as she stood up. No, sir. She had been laying out in the sun, out in her backyard, in broad daylight, in her underwear.”

“Her underwear? Come on, you’re lying.”

“I swear, her underwear.”

“Jesus, what did she look like when she stood up?”

“Just wait a minute, I’ll get to that. Anyway, she went back into the house, and I finished cutting the back yard pretty quick, and then I cut the two little side yards, and the little front yard as quick as I could, too. Then I shut the mower off and went up on her front porch and knocked on the door. In about two seconds she opened the door and smiled at me and said, ‘Oh, you’re finished so soon? Well, just you come on in for a minute while I find you some money now, darling.’ So I stepped inside the door there, into the foyer, and she was standing there in her little robe, with the front of it hanging wide open, digging around in her pocket book. And she said something like, ‘It’s so nice to finally meet you, Warren, your uncle has told me what a nice hardworking young man you are, and he certainly is right. It sure didn’t take you very long to do the whole thing!’ And I said something stupid back to her, like, ‘Yes, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am.’”

“What’d she look like? What did you see? Tell me everything.”

“She looked pretty good from where I was standing, which was only about two feet away from her. You could tell she was kinda a little bit old, but not too old yet. She had a really dark suntan, like maybe she spent a lot of time laying out there in her backyard in her underwear. And she was still all oiled up pretty good, from the suntan lotion. It must’ve been coconut oil or something. She smelled like coconuts.”

“No, dipshit, I mean what did you see through the robe?”

“Oh. Well, it was hanging wide open the whole time, and I could definitely see that all she had on underneath it was a bra and some panties. And they were both pretty skimpy. I could see where her nipples were poking out pretty good, under her bra.”

“Stop! You’re killing me!”

“And I could kinda see the hint of her pussy hair and all, through her panties. It was like one big dark spot down there.”

“Oh Jesus, stop it! Stop it! I’m getting hard just thinking about it. Okay, then what happened?”

“Well, like I said, she was standing there digging through her pocket book looking for some money, and I was standing there with my eyes popping out of my head, trying to see everything I could possibly see, without her catching on that I was trying to see everything, and—.”

“Without her catching on? You dumbass, she was trying to show you everything she had, on purpose, that’s what she was doing. Didn’t you realize that? What the hell else do you think she was trying to do, laying out in the damn sun in her damn bra and panties, and then inviting you inside the damn house and standing there in front of you practically naked, while she was pretending she couldn’t find any money in the bottom of her pocket book. She was trying to tease the hell out of your ass, that’s what she was trying to do, just to see what kind of reaction she’d get out of you. And the whole damn time, she was probably wondering whether or not she should go ahead and try to seduce you or something. That was her plan alright.”
“Seduce me?”

“Yeah, seduce you. Haven’t you ever heard about all these older women that like to go around seducing little 14 and 15 year old boys like you and me? They’re all just a bunch of bored old nympho housewives. They got an old man that can’t get it up anymore, so they’re all the time looking out for some young stud like you or me to come along and give it to them. Shit like that happens all the time. And that’s exactly what this lady was up to, if you ask me. Where was her husband during all this, that’s what I want to know.”

“She doesn’t have a husband anymore, she just got divorced. That’s what Uncle Virgil told me later. That’s why she wants me to start cutting her grass from now on, because her husband’s not there to do it any more.”

“Right, and that’s not all he’s not there to do any more. Man, I’m telling you, if you play your cards right, you could be cutting this woman’s grass, getting paid for it, and then getting laid for it, all at the same time. Sounds to me like she ain’t nothing but hot to trot. What a deal! How’d you get so damn lucky? Then what happened?”

“Nothing really. She kept smiling at me while she was digging around for her money. Then she finally found a five dollar bill, and she handed it to me and said something like, ‘Now, little Warren, will this be enough?’ And I said, ‘Yes, Ma’am, that’s a plenty.’ And she said, ‘Are you sure, now, ‘cause I can give you a little something extra, if that’s not enough?’ And I said, ‘Yes, Ma’am, I’m sure. This is fine.’”

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. The damn woman was dying to give you something extra, and you’re standing there going, ‘Yes, Ma’am, I’m sure. Five dollars is plenty. Yes, Ma’am, I’m sure.’ I can’t believe it! I can’t believe you didn’t know what she was up to. She would have given you anything you wanted, and I mean anything. Then what happened?”

“She gave me the five dollars and asked me if I’d be able to cut her grass every week from now on, and I said yeah, sure, and then she patted me on the head and said something like, ‘It’s so good to see such a nice, sweet, polite young man like yourself, willing to go out and work up a good sweat.’”

“Jesus. I can’t believe this shit. I don’t think I can stand to listen to anymore. Jesus. What color was her hair?”

“Red.”

“What did her tits look like, what you could see of them?”

“Huge.”

“How huge?”

“Huge huge.”

“Shit. So what was the deal with your Uncle, him winking at you and all? He had to know what was going on when he sent you over there to cut that woman’s grass. What did he say when you got back to his house?”

“Nothing really. He asked me if I’d met Mrs. Harrelson, and I said yeah, and then he asked me if I was satisfied with what she paid me, and I said yeah. That’s all he said. I don’t know, I guess maybe he had some kinda idea about Mrs. Harrelson. I’ve been wondering about that ever since Saturday, though. Like, how could he know about Mrs. Harrelson laying out in her backyard in her underwear? You can’t really see her patio from his backyard, because of the fence. He’d probably have to go up into his attic and look out the little side window up there, to have any view of Mrs. Harrelson’s patio.”

“Yeah, and that’s probably just how your old Uncle Virgil spends his sunny afternoons, sitting up in his attic with a pair of binoculars or a camera or something, beating off. Well, anyway, Warren my man, sounds like you’re gonna have a pretty interesting summer, cutting this lady’s grass. Yep, looks like old Warren might be losing his little cherry pretty soon, that’s what I think. Then you’ll be writing yourself a letter to Penthouse, talking about how you’re cutting some old lady’s grass every Saturday morning, and then screwing her and her five daughters for the rest of the afternoon.”

“I don’t think she has any daughters.”

“So, who cares, you gotta make it sound even wilder than it is, the way all those letters do. You gotta exaggerate a little, you know.”

After I told Danny all that stuff about cutting Mrs. Harrelson’s grass, I put the Playboy magazine down and got up and put my “Stampede” album on his stereo. That’s the name of the latest Doobie Brothers album, “Stampede.” I only have a few albums, mostly Doobie Brothers, and I keep them all over at Danny’s house, and he lets me listen to them whenever I come down. Dad won’t allow rock and roll in our house, like I said before.

Anyway, when Danny saw me putting on that Doobie Brothers album, he said, “Oh, yeah, Warren, I almost forgot.” Then he got up and dug around under a pile of stuff on his floor and handed me a Rolling Stone magazine. “I got this Saturday, too,” he said. “I got it especially for you. There’s an article about the Doobie Brothers in there somewhere. Looks like bad news for you, buddy.”

“Bad news? Why’s that?”

“Just read it, you’ll see.”

So I opened it up and found the article he was talking about. It was called “The Doobie Brothers’ Platinum Stampede: One Guitarist On, One Guitarist Off.” And I tell you, I almost felt like crying while I was reading it, because it was talking about how the Doobies were just starting out on a big spring tour, and how everything was going great and all, but then Tom Johnston got real sick from some kinda pancreas disease or something, so he had to be hauled back home while the rest of the guys tried to go on without him, and now he’ll probably have to leave the band altogether, and they’ve already got another guitar player and a piano player to take his place.

“Shit,” I said, “this is bad news. This is terrible.”

“Yeah, I knew that’s what you’d say, the way you idolize that Tom Johnston guy and all. Sounds like he almost died or something.”

“Yeah.”

Danny went back to reading his Baseball Digest magazine, and I just sat there on the floor listening to “Stampede,” trying to figure out what the Doobie Brothers were gonna be like without Tom Johnston anymore. I was feeling pretty lousy, thinking about all that, but then this song on there called “Working On You” came on, and that made me feel a little better for about a minute, because it made me think of Ginny. It always makes me think of her, for some reason. I guess because the words go, “I been working, I been working on you,” which the first time I heard it, right away it made me think about how I was all the time flirting with Ginny in Art class everyday, and how flirting with her can be considered working on her, if you want to think about it in that way. And another part of the song goes, “You keep on working, but you don’t get far,” which really kinda summed up the whole situation, when you got right down to it, because I figured I’d never get far enough for Ginny to be my girl friend or anything, because she’s not a Jehovah’s Witness, and I’m not even old enough to have a girl friend as far as the Witnesses are concerned, even if she was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I was only begging for trouble if I kept on working on her, so to speak.

I was starting to really feel like shit, sitting there listening to that song, because of what I’d just found out about Tom Johnston being sick and close to dying and all, and because I’d started thinking about Ginny and how I had told her I’d come to her birthday party and all. For some reason it suddenly came to me that sooner or later Ginny was gonna hate me. That didn’t exactly cheer me up any.

I picked the Rolling Stone magazine back up and started flipping through it again, and I saw a little ad in there about a new James Taylor album that just came out, which was news to me. So right away I started thinking about Ginny again, and it suddenly dawned on me that I had to buy that James Taylor album and give it to her for her birthday. I didn’t know how I was gonna do it, though.

Then I said to Danny, “Danny, I need you to help me figure out something, if you can.”

Danny looked up from his baseball magazine and said, “Yeah, what’s that?”

“I really need to get a copy of this new James Taylor album before Friday.”

“Why before Friday?”

“Because it’s Ginny’s birthday, and she really loves James Taylor, so I want to give it to her as a birthday present. But I can’t let Mom or Freddie know that I’m getting it for her, so of course I can’t go and get it myself. You know.”

“Oh.” That’s all Danny said. I don’t know what he was thinking. I mean, he knows I’m supposed to be a Jehovah’s Witness kid and all, because Freddie used to spend a lot of time bugging him about it and trying to get him to read the Watchtower and Awake magazines and the Truth book, until Danny finally told Freddie to get lost, and that’s why Freddie says that Danny is gonna be destroyed at Armageddon, because he rejected the Truth when Freddie offered it to him. Anyway, Danny knows I’m supposed to be a Jehovah’s Witness, and he knows we believe a lotta weird things like not celebrating birthdays or holidays and stuff. But me and Danny never talk about Witness stuff. He doesn’t ask me how come I cuss all the time and come down to his house and look at Playboy and Penthouse magazines. That’s why I like to hang around with Danny and play baseball and listen to albums and stuff with him, because around him I can act like I want to act. I don’t have to do any pretending about who I am. I guess he’s just glad I don’t bug him all the time about becoming a Jehovah’s Witness the way Freddie used to, before Danny told him to stop. I guess Danny realizes that I’m not really a Jehovah’s Witness down deep inside, but that I still have to act like one sometimes, to keep Mom and all of them off my back. I’m glad Danny doesn’t ever ask me about it or bring it up any.

Then Danny said, “No problem. Give me the money and I’ll go with Mom when she goes grocery shopping this week. She always goes on Thursday nights, because Friday nights are too crowded, she says, because that’s the night everybody else usually goes shopping.”

I said, “But I doubt they’re gonna have albums in a grocery store.”

“No, but we always go to the Plaza, so while Mom is at the grocery store, I can walk over to Murphy’s and buy it. I’m sure they’ll have it in there. That’s where I always get the albums you ask me to get. Where do you think all your Doobie Brother albums I got for you came from?”

“I don’t know, I never really thought about it.”

“They all came from Murphy’s. So it’s no big deal. Just give me the money sometime between now and Thursday, and I’ll get it Thursday night and give it to you Friday morning. You want album or eight-track?”

“I guess eight-track would be best. It’ll be easier to carry around on the bus and all, so Freddie won’t see it. Yeah, definitely get the eight-track, because then I can give it to her in fifth period Art class, and she’ll get to listen to it right away, because Mr. Michaels will let us play it during class on his tape player. That’ll be a cool surprise. She’ll really love that.”

“So who is this Ginny girl? I never heard you say anything about her before.”

“Oh, she’s just this little eighth-grade girl that’s in my Art class. She’s got a crush on me or something. We been kinda flirting with each other for the last couple of months, that’s all. Then she tells me today that Friday’s her birthday, and she wants me to come to her birthday party, if her father lets her have one, and of course I said ‘Sure, I’ll come,’ like an idiot, when I know good and damn well I can’t go. You know.”
Danny picked up his annual and said, “What’s her last name?”

I said, “Milner.”

So he looked her up. “Yeah, I’ve seen her around in the halls before. She’s kinda cute, for an eighth grader.”

“Yeah. She’s got this major crush on me, so I figure since I won’t be able to go to her party, I can at least get her this James Taylor album, for a birthday present.”

Then Danny said, “Warren, how do you do it? I gotta know your secret. You got eighth-grade teeny boppers and forty-year-old nympho divorcees chasing after you. You got it made in the shade. How-do-you-do-it?” Then he started busting out laughing real hard. But I didn’t care, I knew he was just giving me a hard time. I knew I could count on him to help me out.

Me and Danny never did get around to throwing the baseball any. We just kept sitting around his room, looking at his new magazines and listening to his stereo and talking. Then pretty soon it was getting close to being six o’clock, which was what time Mom told me I had better be back from Danny’s house, because that’s when we always have supper. So at about ten minutes before six, I jumped back on my bike and rode on home.

When I got there, Mom and Freddie were just sitting down for supper, but before I could sit down with them, Mom made me go downstairs and get my sheets out of the dryer and take them back up to my room and re-make my bed. So I did all that, and it only took about ten minutes, so it wasn’t any big deal. When I finally got back to the table and was eating supper, I was afraid Mom was gonna jump in on me about whether or not I had been thinking about today’s daily text and how it applied to me, which is what she had told me to be doing while I was down at Danny’s. But she didn’t say anything about it, so I certainly wasn’t gonna bring it up. I guess she was gonna give me more time to think about it.

We spent the whole time listening to Freddie tell about his fine witnessing to his guidance counselor that day. You see, Freddie’s guidance counselor, Mr. Higgins, called him in to go over what classes Freddie wants to take next year and all. And Mr. Higgins told Freddie that since he’ll be a senior next year, he should be thinking about what colleges he wants to apply to, and what scholarships he might be eligible for, and stuff like that.

Freddie said, “Mr. Higgins was really shocked when I told him I wasn’t gonna go to college, because a worldly education wasn’t gonna help me gain life’s prize. Then I told him that Armageddon was gonna come before I ever got the chance to go to college anyway, and even if it wasn’t coming so soon, I would go serve at Bethel before I would go off to any college.”

Mom said, “And what did he say about that?”

“He didn’t know what I was talking about, so I explained to him about what Jehovah’s Witness believe and all, and about the urgency of the times, and so forth. I really gave him a fine witness. I spent all of fifth period in there with him. All Mr. Higgins could say was, ‘Well, Freddie, your grades are pretty good, I think you should consider all your options carefully, before you go making a final decision. Think about it, and if you change your mind, come back to see me and we can get the ball rolling for you. You’ll need to take your SATs if you’re gonna apply to a college, so there’s not a lot of time left.’”

Mom said, “Well, I think you ought to take him a Truth book tomorrow. Your witnessing to him today may have just planted a seed of curiosity in the back of his mind. You never know when someone’s mind is gonna open up for the Truth. You never know.”

Freddie said, “Yeah, that’s just what I was thinking, too. I’ve already put a Truth book aside, to take to school tomorrow.”

The whole time Mom and Freddie were having this stupid discussion, I was just staying quiet and eating my supper as fast as I could, not trying to draw any attention to myself. My plan for the night was to have all my homework done by 8:00, because that’s when Monday Night Baseball was gonna come on. The Dodgers and Expos were supposed to play, neither of which I was that crazy about, but at least it was a baseball game. I would have preferred to see Pete Rose and the Cincinnati Reds play somebody, but it was gonna be the Dodgers and Expos or nothing. And it might end up being nothing, because most of the time Mom won’t let me watch the Monday night game. That’s another thing she does that gets me mad all the time. She’ll see me trying to watch a ball game, and then she’ll suddenly decide she wants to watch something else, so she changes the channel to Gunsmoke or the Rookies, or whatever else is on, as long as it ain’t the ball game. It ain’t that she gives a damn about Gunsmoke or the Rookies, she just doesn’t want me to see the ball game, like it kills her to see me enjoying something. But sometimes she’ll get to doing something downstairs or in her room or somewhere, and she won’t realize there’s a game on, and I’ll get to watch a lot of it before she comes back through the living room and sees me watching it and makes me change the channel.

So anyway, like I said, I was trying to stay out of their conversation, so I could finish supper and get to doing my homework. But then Mom turned to me and said, “Is this Mr. Higgins your guidance counselor, too?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

Freddie said, “You never know who your counsellor is until they call you in. I think there’s just a couple of them that work down a list, and who ever gets to your name first is the one that calls you in. It’ll either be Mr. Higgins or Mrs. Erskine, probably.”

Then Mom turned to me again and said, “Well, if you do get called in by this Mr. Higgins, it would really be a good opportunity for you to give him the same strong witness that Freddie did. Sometimes it takes being witnessed to by two or three different people, for a person to get an appetite for the Truth. So you be sure and do that, if you get called in by Mr. Higgins, you hear me?”

I said, “Yes, Ma’am.” But that was the last thing I wanted to do, to witness to Mr. Higgins, or anybody else for that matter. So that was just another thing I was gonna have to worry about, Mr. Higgins calling me in for a guidance counselor’s meeting, and having Mom bug me about whether or not I took the opportunity to witness to him, the way that Freddie did.

Everybody was almost finished eating, and Mom said, “Now don’t forget, boys, Brother Gottwald, the new Circuit Servant is in town this week, so I want both of you to be sure and be well prepared for all the meetings this week. That means reading over the study materials before hand, so you’ll be prepared to participate during the meetings. And by the way, Warren, you do know you’ve got a talk on the Ministry School, Thursday night, don’t you?”

“I do?”

“Yes, you do. You mean to tell me you didn’t even know about it until I told you just now? Don’t you keep up with the assignment sheet on the bulletin board at the Hall? Honestly, Warren, I can’t believe you, sometimes.”

I didn’t know what to say, I could see Mom was getting pretty steamed at me. Finally I said, “Uh, yeah, that’s right. I remember now. I saw my name up there a couple of weeks ago, but I thought it was for next week, not this week. Man, that doesn’t leave me a lot of time. I guess I gotta get to work on it.”

“Well I guess you do, young man. You better get to work on it as soon as possible, and I mean tonight. And you better make sure you do a good job of it, too. You certainly want to do your best in front of Brother Gottwald, you know. I don’t want it to look like you just threw the whole thing together at the last minute, like you usually do. I think Brother Gottwald deserves the courtesy of a little extra effort, don’t you?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Alright, then. As soon as you’re finished with supper, you get all your homework done and then get right to work on that talk. Have you got much homework tonight?”

“No, Ma’am, not a whole lot.”

“Well, you get it done, and then get to work on that talk. If I had known you hadn’t even started on it already, I would never have let you go off playing baseball after school today, that’s for sure. Honestly, Warren, do I have to keep up with you every single minute, just to make sure you’re doing everything you’re supposed to be doing? Do I?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“Well, it sure looks like I do. You’re old enough to shoulder your own responsibilities, you know, without having your mother follow around behind you, looking after you every second of the day. It’s about time you started shaping up, don’t you think?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Jesus, she kept on and on and on. Warren should try harder, and Warren should be a better Witness, and Warren should learn from Freddie’s example, and all that same old crap. And right when it looked like she was gonna keep going on about it forever, the phone rang, which really made me glad, because I thought she’d have to stop lecturing me at least for a minute or so, because whenever the phone rings, it’s almost always for her. It’s usually Sister Denson or Sister Wilkerson or somebody, and they’ll stay on the phone half the night talking about Field Service and what’s going on at the Kingdom Hall and stuff like that. Since I was sitting the closest to the phone, I was gonna get up and answer it, but Freddie beat me to it.

So Mom just kept on yakking at me. But then Freddie said, “Warren, it’s for you. It’s a giiiirrrl.”

Well, I didn’t know who in the world that could be on the phone, hardly anybody ever calls me, especially not a girl. So I got up and took the phone from Freddie and said, “Hello?”

“Hi, Warren, it’s Ginny! Hi! I hope you don’t mind that I called you. I looked up the number in the phone book, but I had to call about three or four Grubbers before I finally got the right one. But I found you. I hope it’s okay. Hi!”

I said, “Oh, hi. Yeah, it’s okay. That’s fine.”

She said, “Well Warren, the reason I called, is to tell you that Daddy said I can’t have my party Friday night.” She really sounded sad when she said that, like she was gonna start crying or something. “Ain’t that a bummer?”

I said, “Yeah, it is.” I couldn’t really say anything much more than that, because Freddie and Mom were sitting right there looking at me and listening to every word I said. I felt bad for Ginny, though, I really did, but on the inside I was kinda glad a little bit, because it also meant that I was out of hot water for saying I’d come to her party, when I knew I couldn’t. So now she wouldn’t find out so soon what a jerk I was, maybe.

Then she said, “Yeah, Daddy said I can’t have a party Friday night—but I can have it SATURDAY night!” Then she let out a little squeal, like she was really thrilled about it all, and like she thought it was really funny that she had just played a little joke on me, and had me going and feeling all sorry for her. She laughed and laughed. “Ha, I fooled you, didn’t I? Isn’t that great? Isn’t my Daddy the bestest?”

“Yeah, it sounds like it, that’s for sure.”

“Actually, Daddy is right. Even though my birthday is Friday, Saturday is a much better day to have the party, because then we’ll have plenty of time to get everything set up and ready for it and all, instead of rushing around trying to do everything Friday after school. Wow, I’m so excited. He just told me the good news, and I just had to find your number and call and tell you all about it and everything. You’re still gonna come, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, sure.”

“Great! Wow, we’re gonna have soooo much fun! I can’t wait!” Then she squealed again.

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

“Well, anyway, gotta go. See ya tomorrow, cutey, I mean Footboy. Bye-bye, now.”

“Yeah, see ya tomorrow. Good-bye.”

As soon as I hung up the phone, Mom started in on me. “And just what was that all about? Who was that?”

I said, “Uh, it was just a girl in my, uh, Art class. A bunch of us are working on a project together, and it was supposed to be turned in, uh, on Wednesday. But we’re a little behind on it, so she talked the teacher into giving us an extra day, so now it’s not due until, uh, Thursday. That’s who it was.”

“Well why in the world did she have to call and tell you that tonight, why couldn’t she just wait until tomorrow at school?”

“I don’t know, she just did, that’s all.”

“Well that just sounds foolish, if you ask me.”

Then Freddie opened his big mouth and said, “Maybe she’s goo-goo for Warren. Maybe that was just an excuse for her to call him. But that’s hard to believe.”

Mom said, “Well, I don’t know what she is, but I’ll tell you one thing, Warren, young man, I won’t be having any girls calling here for you, and especially not any worldly girls, that’s for sure. You know what the Society says about such things. So if you’re doing anything to encourage this girl to be goo-goo over you, you’d better put a stop to it right now, and I mean it. You hear me?”

I guess I was kinda tired of being yelled at so much already, in one night, so before I could catch myself, I blurted out, “Listen, she’s not goo-goo over me. Nobody is goo-goo over me, okay? I’m too much of a piss-ant for anybody to be goo-goo over, so just forget the whole thing. Don’t worry about it.”

Well, that was the wrong thing to say, I guess, and especially the way I said it. Mom shot right back at me, “Young man, you just better watch your tone of voice with me, I don’t need any of your smart lip tonight. And I won’t have you using those kind of words in my house. Honestly, where do you pick up words like that? You just heard what I had to say about this girl, and I meant every word. But just in case your ears are clogged or something, I’ll say it again and make it perfectly clear: If this girl is trying to get goo-goo with you, you just better put a stop to it, and I mean right now. And I better not find out you’ve been trying to get goo-goo with this girl, either. I won’t have it, you hear me? You hear me?”

“Yes, Ma’am. But ya’ll are just making something out of nothing, that’s all I’m trying to say. She just called me about our Art project, that’s all.”

Mom said, “Well, that better be all. I mean it, too.”

I thought then I was gonna get to leave the table and go start on my homework, but Mom turned to me again and said, “And by the way, Warren, don’t forget it’s your week to do the dishes. And after you’ve done them, I want to see you get busy on your homework, and then on your talk. No television for you tonight, young man. And no more phone calls for you tonight, either, from anybody.”

Well, that really pissed me off, her telling me it was my week to do the damn dishes. That’s a really touchy subject with me, that’s for sure. You see, back when I was in about the sixth grade or something, Mom decided that since she did all the house cleaning and cooking and everything, then me and Freddie could be in charge of washing up the supper dishes every night. She used to make us do it together, he’d wash and I’d dry, and the next time, I’d wash and he’d dry. But when we did it together, we always ended up getting into a big fight about something or another before we even got halfway through. So then she just made us take turns doing it all, the washing and the drying. So now Freddie does them every night for one week, and then I do them every night for the next week, and we keep rotating like that. We’ve been doing it like that for the last few years, and like I just said, it really pisses me off, every time I have to do them, and I’ll tell you why. Because I don’t think it should be me and Freddie’s job in the first place, because doing dishes is a girl thing. And also because me and Freddie have to do all the outside work, which includes cutting the grass and raking the leaves and shoveling the snow and taking out the garbage and stuff like that, so I don’t see why Mom can’t do the inside stuff like cooking and cleaning, like most moms do. Besides, me and Freddie have to go to school all day, then we have homework to do at night most of the time, and we also have all those damn meetings at the Kingdom Hall we have to go to and get prepared for, it just doesn’t leave us much time for doing anything else. Me and Mom have argued about it a whole lot since she started making us do it, almost as much as we’ve argued about how long my hair should be. Not quite that much, but almost that much. But Mom still says we have to do it, and that’s final, so we do it. I’ll tell you the truth, as far as housework chores go, I don’t really mind doing stuff like running the vacuum cleaner or dusting or sweeping or something, but doing dishes is just something I can’t stand. As far as I’m concerned, it’s girl’s work, and I’m a boy. No other guy I know of has to do the dishes. Danny sure doesn’t.

So anyway, Mom told me it was my week to do the dishes, and her and Freddie got up and left the kitchen, and went off into the living room to study their Watchtowers or something. I was so mad, I wanted to start yelling about how dishes were for girls to do, not boys, but I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. It would only make Mom madder than she already was, if I brought that argument back up, and then she might decide to teach me a lesson and make me wash the dishes every night until Armageddon comes, instead of just every other week. I never win very many arguments with Mom.

I had no choice but to do the damn dishes, and it took me about forty-five minutes or so, because there were lots of extra pots and pans and hard stuff like that to wash up, because Mom had cooked up a pretty big supper. And that’s another thing that pisses me off all the time. It seems like on the weeks when it’s Freddie’s turn to do the dishes, we mostly have sandwiches or soup or something like that, something easy to clean up after. But when it’s my turn, we have all these big elaborate nine course dinners where Mom has to dirty up every damn pot in the house. Maybe it ain’t always like that, but it sure seems that way to me.

I was still so mad about everything when I finished the dishes, I went to my room and grabbed a bunch of books from the stack I’d left on the floor when I got home from school, and took them downstairs. I decided I’d lay on Dad’s couch and do my homework. Maybe down there nobody would bother me. So I stretched out on the couch down there with my Slaughterhouse-Five book and my Algebra book. That’s really all the homework I had that night, a couple of math problems, and chapter nine in Slaughterhouse-Five, which I had to be sure and read because Miss Hiller had kinda promised us we’d have a quiz on it the next day.

I did the Algebra problems pretty quick, and then read chapter nine of my book, which was about twenty-five pages or so long. There was a bunch of weird stuff going on in that chapter, so it was kind of mixed up and confusing. But really that’s the way the whole book is, because the guy in there doesn’t live a normal life like you or me, he’s all the time bouncing around into different parts of his life, like he’s in a time warp or something. I can’t explain it, really. You’d have to read it for yourself to understand what I’m talking about. All I know is it’s pretty hard to keep up with that guy, and that makes it hard to take quizzes on it.

Well, it was about eight o’clock when I finished my homework, which is when I wanted to go upstairs and watch the baseball game on TV, but I had orders from Mom to start working on the talk that I was supposed to be giving on Thursday night. So I went back upstairs to my room, to start working on that. Mom and Freddie were still in the living room. Mom was reading a Watchtower and Freddie was doing some homework. The TV was off, of course. Freddie doesn’t like baseball, so he never watches the game.

I went to my room and found the Ministry School Schedule, to see what my talk was supposed to be about, so I’d know what to start working on. I guess I better explain some of this Kingdom Hall stuff that I’m talking about here.

First of all, the Ministry School is what they call the first meeting that’s held every Thursday night. It lasts an hour. What happens is, three different Brothers and two different Sisters get up in front of the congregation, on the platform, and give “talks.” It’s called the “Ministry School” because it’s supposed to train you in public speaking, which is supposed to be useful in your personal ministry. So when you go out in the Field Service, which means when you go knocking on people’s doors and trying to get them to read the Watchtower magazine or the Truth book and trying to get them to become Jehovah’s Witnesses, too, you’ll feel more comfortable talking about Bible truths in front of strangers, because you’re already had a lotta practice, giving talks at the Kingdom Hall.

The first and second and fifth talks are given by Brothers, and they get to speak directly to the congregation. The Sisters give the third and fourth talks, but they can’t speak directly to the congregation, because the Bible says that the women are to be subservient to the men in the congregation, so you can’t have a woman on the platform speaking to or teaching the men directly. So what the Sisters do is put on little skits where they talk to each other, and the congregation listens in on the conversation. That way, the Brothers aren’t learning directly from the Sisters. Really, if you think about it, it’s just a loop-hole way for the Sisters to give talks.

The first and fifth talks are given by the older and more mature Brothers. The second talk is usually given by little piss-ants like me. It’s actually not a real talk at all, where you get up and talk about your subject the whole time. Really all it is is a Bible reading, where you’re assigned a chapter or so from the Bible, and you’re supposed to read it out loud to the congregation. The only talking part you have to make up is some kind of introduction at the beginning that tells everybody what it is you’re about to read, and then some kind of conclusion at the end to tell everybody what you just read. And you can throw in some extra comments in the middle somewhere as you go along, if you want to. But you’ve only got six minutes, so you can’t throw in too much crap. If the chapter is short, I just read slower, so I don’t have to throw in many extra comments.

Another thing about the Ministry School is that it’s run by the Ministry School Conductor, who of course at our Kingdom Hall is Brother Harris. What the Conductor does is introduce each speaker as they approach the platform, tell the audience what the topic of the talk is gonna be about, and tell the audience what the speaker is gonna be working on. You see, when you join the Ministry School, they give you this little sheet of paper that has a bunch of things that you’re supposed to keep in mind as you give each talk. They don’t make you keep all of them in mind, just a couple for each talk. Like for one talk, you may be concentrating on the categories “Clear and Understandable,” and “Introduction Aroused Interest.” Then the next talk you may be concentrating on “Volume,” and “Pausing.” So each time you’re about to give a talk, you look at where you are on the list, and you know which two categories you’re gonna be graded on this time. Then right after you give your talk, the Conductor will grade you on how well he thought you did, according to what you were supposed to be working on, and he announces to the whole congregation what grade he just gave you, and why he decided to give you that particular grade. Like, he might give you a W, which stands for “Work on this,” or a I for “Improved,” or a G for “Good.” If you get a W or an I on something, you have to keep working on that point until you bring it up to a G.

Freddie’s sheet has all G’s on it. Mine has some G’s, but also a bunch of W’s and I’s. To tell you the truth, I hardly ever even bother to look at my sheet to see what I’m supposed to be working on. I just get up there and give the talk and get it over with. I don’t care what my grade is. It’s not like they’re gonna flunk you out of the Kingdom Hall or anything.

Anyway, they always give me the Bible reading talk, talk number two, which is fine by me, because that means I only have to say about two or three sentences of my own, and the rest of it is just reading the Bible chapter, which is pretty easy. That’s why I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it, when I have a talk, because I can throw it together pretty quick, without a lot of effort. I usually don’t even check out what chapter I’m supposed to be reading until Wednesday night, and sometimes not even until Thursday night, on the way to the Kingdom Hall. If Mom knew that, she’d be pretty mad, because she thinks you should work and work and work on your talks for two weeks in advance, like she does. That’s what Freddie always does, too, and he’ll get up in the living room in front of Mom and practice giving it over and over, so she can tell him what she thinks, and how he might need to make changes to it, and so on. Of course, unlike me, Freddie is considered mature enough to give the number five talk. He brags to me about it all the time, and says that maybe one day I’ll grow up and they won’t make me give the number two baby talk forever. To be honest, I’m glad that’s the only one I have to give, because the less I have to do, the better, as far as I’m concerned. In fact, I wish I didn’t have to give any talks at all, but if I told Mom I wanted to drop out of the Ministry School, she’d kill me. It’s considered a good thing at the Kingdom Hall if all your kids are in the Ministry School.

So, back to what I was talking about, I looked up my talk in the Ministry School Schedule, and I saw that I was really in luck, because the chapter I was gonna have to read that week was Matthew 24, which would be a piece of cake, because that’s like the most popular Bible chapter in the world with the Witnesses. Every Jehovah’s Witness in the universe has read it about a million times. So I wouldn’t have to dig around and do a lot of research in the Aid to Bible Understanding book or any of the other old books, looking for something to say for my introduction and for my conclusion. In fact, the Truth book has a whole section of stuff about Matthew 24, so I knew I could probably steal my introduction and conclusion directly from there. I was really glad about that, too, because sometimes you get stuck with some off-the-wall chapter, like in Leviticus or Numbers or somewhere like that, and the first time you look at it, you can’t figure out what in the world it’s talking about, so you have to go and do a lot of research just to come up with a halfway decent introduction and conclusion, which is a lot of trouble sometimes.

When I saw I only had to read Matthew 24, and not some off-the-wall chapter, I knew I didn’t have anything to worry about. I could get this talk up in about five minutes. So I grabbed my Truth book and started flipping around through it, looking for what it had to say in there about Matthew 24. Actually, it’s covered in both Chapter 10, “God’s Kingdom Comes to Power in the Midst of Its Enemies,” and in Chapter 11, “The Last Days of This Wicked System of Things.” So I scanned through those two chapters real quick, looking for a paragraph or two that I could steal, to use as my introduction and conclusion. I didn’t need to look for stuff to use as additional comments. Matthew 24 is a pretty long chapter, as it is, so I wasn’t gonna worry about throwing in a bunch of comments in the middle, while I was reading it. I’d be lucky to get it all read in six minutes.

I found something in Chapter 10 that looked like it would work as my introduction, so I wrote it down on an index card, pretty much word for word:

In Matthew 24, Jesus described for our benefit what would take place on earth when he would begin to rule in heaven. In this way, although the events in heaven would be invisible to human eyes, there would be visible proof that Christ was at last on the throne, taking action as king. It would be proof that the wicked system of things that has oppressed mankind for centuries had entered its last days. Although it was foretold that there would be ridiculers that would try to belittle the facts, yet the evidence would be clear. So I invite you to follow along with me in your New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures as I read Matthew, Chapter 24...

Come Thursday night, after I read my introduction off the index card, I would then read the whole chapter of Matthew 24. That’s where Jesus talks about nations rising up against nations, and kingdoms against kingdoms, and earthquakes and food shortages, and false prophets arising to mislead many, and the preaching of the good news of the kingdom throughout the whole inhabited earth, and all that kinda stuff.

Anyway, so far so good. I looked around some more in the Truth book, and I found something in Chapter 11 that looked like it’d make a pretty good conclusion, so I copied it down on the back of the same index card that had my introduction written on it:

The Bible speaks of the time in which we are living as the “last days” or the “time of the end.” The facts show that this is a limited period that has a definite beginning and a definite end. It began in 1914 when Jesus Christ was enthroned as king in the heavens. It will end when God destroys this present wicked system of things. What a relief it will be when the organizations and persons that cheat and oppress, and all who endanger the security of their fellowmen, are gone. How soon will that be? God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, gives the answer. After drawing attention to the many things that mark the period from 1914 onward as the “time of the end,” Jesus said: “This generation will by no means pass away until all these things occur.” There are people still living who were alive in 1914 and saw what was happening then and who were old enough that they still remember those events. This generation is getting up in years now. A great number of them have already passed away in death. This means that only a short time is left before the end comes. So now is the time to take urgent action if you do not want to be swept away with this wicked system.

That’s what my whole talk was gonna be. I felt good, because I had gotten it up pretty quick, and it seemed easy, so I thought it would turn out real good on Thursday night. I was hoping so anyway, because my last talk was so lousy, because I didn’t prepare for it much at all, that Mom got mad at me for not doing a better job. But this one was gonna turn out good. I was sure of that.

I layed back on my bed and was kinda daydreaming about things, and after a while, somehow my mind got back to how easy my talk was to get up, and how easy it was gonna be to give it and all. And then for the first time it sunk in to me what it was actually all about, the subject of my talk I mean, which was that the end of this wicked system of things was almost here. I got to thinking about the last line in my conclusion, which I had stolen from the Truth book, “So now is the time to take urgent action if you do not want to be swept away with this wicked system.” I started feeling like a big hypocrite, knowing that I was gonna get up in front of the whole congregation Thursday night and say that to them, but also knowing that if I didn’t get my act together pretty soon, I was gonna be one of those that would be swept away with this wicked system, when it was finally destroyed at Armageddon, which was gonna be happening in October.

Of course, thinking about all that just made me think about all the rotten things I had done lately, especially that day. Like looking at that Playboy magazine down at Danny’s house, and the whole time wishing it was a Penthouse magazine instead, because Penthouses are dirtier. And telling Ginny that I would go to her birthday party, and asking Danny to help me get that James Taylor album to give to Ginny as a birthday present. And lying to Mom about why Ginny had called me on the phone, and telling Mom that Ginny and me weren’t getting goo-goo with each other. And not wanting to give a witness to Mr. Higgins if he called me in for a guidance counselor session. And getting mad that I had to do the dishes and couldn’t watch the Dodgers and Expos on TV, even though I don’t really like either one of those teams anyway. And plagiarizing the introduction and conclusion for my talk word for word out of the Truth book, instead of taking the time to think them up myself. And on and on.

All that made me feel pretty down. I just wished I could go to sleep, and sleep for six months straight, and then wake up sometime in November, which will be after Armageddon has come, and find out that I had slept through the whole thing, and somehow they had forgotten to destroy me, even though I was such a rotten kid and didn’t deserve to live in the New World. And maybe I would wake up with a new pure heart condition, too. Then it would be easier to change my evil ways, and I wouldn’t keep doing all these bad things all the time.

All of a sudden, right in the middle of my daydreaming and feeling bad about all the things I’d been doing lately, Mom threw open my bedroom door, and said, “Are you working on that talk, like I told you to, Warren?”

Luckily I still had my Bible and Truth book and index cards scattered out on the bed there. I said, “Yes, Ma’am. I’ve been working on it for the last hour.”

She said, “Good. I’m expecting a good job out of you this time. Not like last time. You hear?”

I said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

She closed the door and went away.

I picked all the stuff up off my bed and set it on the floor against the wall. That’s when I saw that old The Time Is At Hand book again, laying in a pile of old books and magazines on the floor there, where I’d stuck it yesterday and then forgotten about it. So I picked it up and layed back down across my bed and started flipping through it again. I opened it up to where Charles T. Russell had signed it to Sister Flowers, there inside the front cover. “To dear young Sister Clara, may this book prove to be a blessing from the Lord. Charles T. Russell, June 1, 1889.” It didn’t dawn on me until just then that yesterday was June 1, too. Then I figured it up in my head, and calculated that Russell had signed that book to Sister Clara Flowers eighty-six years ago, yesterday. Sister Flowers must have been only about fourteen years old at the time. That was pretty wild.

It felt funny thinking about what the world must have been like all those years ago. I don’t know who the president was at the time. I do know Mark Twain was still alive back then. Ty Cobb was only about two years old. And Adolf Hitler was only about two months old. The reason I know that stuff is because Mark Twain and Ty Cobb are two of my biggest heroes, along with the Doobie Brothers, of course. And I had to do a little report on Hitler in History class one time, so I knew he was born in April of 1889. He was supposed to have died in 1945, but there are some people who think he might still be alive in South America somewhere. I doubt it, though.

Anyway, I layed there wondering where Mark Twain was and what he was doing the exact moment that Russell was signing that book. I wondered if Mark Twain had ever met Charles T. Russell, or if Mark Twain had ever read The Time Is At Hand. I wondered if Sister Flowers or Charles T. Russell had ever read Huckleberry Finn.

Then I found something in that old book that I guess I didn’t have time enough to find the day before when I was first looking through it at the Kingdom Hall, before Brother Harris grabbed it away from me and told me to take it back downstairs and put it back where I got it from. What I found stuck in there was an old-timey looking photograph of a girl. It was a picture of Sister Flowers. On the back of the photograph was written “Clara Jean Flowers, June 1, 1889, Allegheny, Pennsylvania.”

Allegheny is where Charles T. Russell’s headquarters used to be, before he moved them. Remember aways back when I told you about Freddie saying that even if he knew Armageddon wasn’t coming in October this year, he still wouldn’t want to go to college, he’d go serve the Society at Bethel instead? Well, “Bethel” is what they call the headquarters of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is now in Brooklyn, New York, and that’s where all the books and magazines are printed. Brothers from all over the United States and the rest of the world volunteer to go there and serve in the printing factories and offices. They don’t even get paid real money or anything, they just get room and board and a small allowance, like five or ten dollars a week or something. It’s supposed to be a real big honor to be accepted for service at Bethel. Only people real strong in the Truth like Freddie can get in. I wouldn’t have a chance, that’s for sure.

So anyway, I found that picture of Sister Flowers, looking like she was about fourteen years old, taken the same day that Charles T. Russell signed the book for her. She must have gone on a sight-seeing trip at the printing factory in Allegheny, then met Russell, and then had her picture taken at some studio, all on the same day. And I’ll tell you something, Sister Flowers didn’t look so hot of course when I first knew her, because she was already about eighty-five years old or something, but judging by what I could see in that picture of her at fourteen, she was a real looker. I mean she was really beautiful. She had long dark curly hair and dark eyes and nice lips. And it looked like she definitely had a pretty big chest, too, for a fourteen year old. She didn’t have on a low-cut dress or anything, of course. She was actually wearing a dress that buttoned all the way up to her neck, but it was pulled real tight across her top, and you could tell she had some big ones. I can’t believe she never got married or anything. She must have had a thousand guys chasing after her, the way she looked in that picture. I know I would have chased her, back then. I just couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. I must have layed there for fifteen straight minutes, just staring at that picture.

Well, after a long time of looking at that picture of Sister Flowers, I noticed something about the page where I found it. There were two whole paragraphs underlined with a pencil, which was funny, because there weren’t any questions at the bottom of the pages of this book, like there are in most Witness book these days. Anyway, this is what was underlined:

Be not surprised, then, when in subsequent chapters we present proofs that the setting up of the Kingdom of God is already begun, that it is pointed out in prophecy as due to begin the exercise of power in A. D. 1878, and that the “battle of the great day of God Almighty” (Rev. 16:14), which will end in A. D. 1914 with the complete overthrow of earth’s present rulership, is already commenced. The gathering of the armies is plainly visible from the standpoint of God’s Word.

If our vision be unobstructed by prejudice, when we get the telescope of God’s Word rightly adjusted we may see with clearness the character of many of the events due to take place in the “Day of the Lord”—that we are in the very midst of those events, and that “the Great Day of His Wrath is come.”

That was the only thing underlined in the whole book. I flipped through some of the rest of it, hoping to find some more pictures of Sister Clara, or anything else interesting, but it all looked to be about the same thing over and over. I saw 1914 on just about every page I looked at, and I saw the dates 1873 and 1874 a lot. I didn’t read any of it too close, but it looked like Russell was trying to prove that the invisible presence of Jesus started in 1874, which was news to me. I thought the Witnesses always believed Jesus returned in 1914, but that must have been one of the things they changed after Russell died. In fact, of all those dates I saw in there, 1914 is about the only one you see in Witness books anymore. I guess they had to throw out a bunch of them. There were a lot of charts with diagrams and calculations of dates and stuff about dates, what this date meant, and what that date meant, and so on. I tried reading a paragraph here and there, but Russell’s writing was kinda show-offy and hard to follow, like he was trying to make everything seem real complicated, trying to impress you with how smart he was. I got the same feeling when I tried to read a Charles Dickens book once.

I didn’t see 1975 in there anywhere, of course.

Well, ten minutes of flipping through The Time Is At Hand was plenty long enough for me to find out I wasn’t interested in reading any more of it. I have to read enough of that crap as it is. In fact, when I was putting that old book back in the pile on the floor, I saw my Tuesday night study book in there, and I realized I’d better get that out and underline some of this week’s lesson, before Mom came back into my room and asked me if I’d done it yet or not. Let me explain what I’m talking about, again. Well, the meeting we have on Tuesday night is an hour long and it’s called the Tuesday Night Book Study, and it’s a lot like the Watchtower Study on Sunday, except instead of studying the Watchtower Magazine, you study one of the Society’s books. The book we’re all studying now is called God’s “Eternal Purpose” Now Triumphing For Man’s Good. It’s a small book like the Truth book, and of course it has questions at the bottom of each page for all the paragraphs on that page, and of course you’re supposed to read each paragraph and underline the answer that’s given there within the paragraph for the question at the bottom of the page. Then when you get to the Tuesday Night Book Study, the Book Study Conductor starts the meeting by having someone read the first paragraph, then he asks the question from the bottom of the page for that paragraph, then a bunch of people raise their hands, because they know the answer, and the conductor calls on one of them, and that person will read the answer they underlined to the question out loud. Then somebody reads the second paragraph, and it goes on like that, for the whole hour. It works the same way as the Watchtower Study, which I told you about, awhile back.

I’ve gotten to where I don’t bother reading what the study lesson is about anymore, I just grab the book and start at the beginning of that week’s lesson, and just go down each page and underline a sentence here and a sentence there, to make it look like I spent a bunch of time doing personal study. That only takes about two minutes, which is pretty quick. Freddie and Mom spend hours doing their studies every week, when you count up the time they spend doing the Watchtower study, too. I try to get it all done in about ten or fifteen minutes, if I can.

I picked up my God’s “Eternal Purpose” Now Triumphing For Man’s Good book, and looked at where that week’s lesson began, which was Chapter 14, “Triumph for the ‘Eternal Purpose.’” I glanced through it real quick, before I started underlining any of the sentences in the paragraphs, just so I’d have a general idea of what it was about, in case Mom asked me any questions about it before the meeting tomorrow night. And it was mainly the same old stuff about 1914 marking the beginning of Christ’s invisible rule from heaven, and about the 144,000 being chosen as God’s “spiritual Israelites,” and about the “conclusion of the system of things.” And there was a page or so about how the Witnesses come up with the particular date of 1914, which has something to do with subtracting 607 B.C. from 1914 A.D., and coming up with 2,520 years, and dividing that by seven, because the Bible speaks somewhere about seven prophetic “times,” and that gives you 360 years, and that was supposed to be important to the equation, somehow, though I didn’t read it close enough to figure out why. And since World War I began in 1914, that proves the Witnesses are right about it being the year that Jesus cast Satan and the demons out of heaven and began ruling invisibly, because Satan was mad about being thrown out of heaven, of course, so he went around and got all the political rulers down here on Earth all agitated against each other, and got them to start WWI.

It seems to me that about the only difference between The Time Is At Hand and God’s “Eternal Purpose” Now Triumphing For Man’s Good, is one came out in 1889 and the other came out in 1974. They both say about the same thing, that the world is gonna end pretty soon.

After I finished underlining answers for the Tuesday Night Book Study, I figured I’d had about enough for one night, because it was getting to be about 10:00 or so, and I was plenty tired, and ready for bed. So I went and did what I like to do sometimes before I go to bed, which is to fill the bathtub up with hot water and soak in it for awhile. I like to do that, to relax. So that’s what I did.

I was laying in there in the bathtub, completely underwater expect for my head, and I was daydreaming and contemplating about things and letting my mind wander all over the place. I got to thinking about some of the stuff that happened that day at school. That got me to thinking about the new school annual, which got me to thinking about Miss Hiller’s picture in there, and how beautiful and sexy she is, and how much in love with her I am, and I went from thinking about her to thinking about Ginny, and how she had called me “cutey” on the phone, and how she seemed to be acting goo-goo about me a lot, more and more. So I got to thinking about whether or not I should try to get Ginny to be my secret girlfriend, and what it would be like if she was my girlfriend, and what if I managed somehow to sneak to her birthday party on Saturday night, and we somehow ended up alone in her basement or something, and got to kissing and making out, which is something I’ve never done before, of course, but I definitely wouldn’t mind starting out with Ginny, because she’s probably never made out before either, so she wouldn’t think I was weird or something for not having any experience with that sort of thing. That got me to thinking about what kind of body Ginny has, which seems okay and all, from what I can tell, just that she’s kinda skinny, so she doesn’t have very big boobs yet or anything, which got me to thinking about that old picture of Sister Flowers that I found, because her tits looked so big and perfect in that picture, the way they were straining against that old dress she was wearing. And that got me to thinking about Mrs. Harrelson, the way she’d been laying around her backyard in her underwear while I was cutting her grass last Saturday, with her huge titties hanging out everywhere, and what Danny said about her trying to seduce me, which then got me to thinking about what it would be like if Mrs. Harrelson really did try to seduce me, stuff like what she would look like when she took her robe and underwear off, and would she expect me to know what to do, or would she guess that it was my first time, so she’d have to teach me everything I needed to know, and would she say stuff to me like, “Oh, baby, I need it so bad,” and “Give it to me good, give it to me good.” All that kinda stuff was running back and forth through my head, and the next thing I knew I was jerking off again, as usual, right there in the bathtub.

Well, to be honest, that’s something that’s been bothering me a lot lately. Jerking off, I mean. It worries me because Jehovah’s Witnesses are really down on guys that jerk off. They think it’s really bad. They don’t call it “jerking off” though, they call it “self-abuse.”

I’m not proud of it or anything, but I’ve been abusing myself for about a year now, I guess. I discovered how to do it by accident, one night while I was taking a bath. It was right after Danny showed me the first Penthouse magazine he got. I was taking a bath that night, and I was laying there in the tub, and for some reason I got to thinking about all the dirty pictures in the Penthouse, where the naked girls had their legs spread open real wide and you could see what was down there in between them. And I was thinking about some of the letters I’d read in there, the ones where people talk about all the wild sex they’d been having. And I didn’t even notice that I’d started rubbing myself as I was thinking about all those things. And then all of a sudden I got this really strange feeling all over, and I knew I should stop rubbing myself that way, because the more I rubbed the stranger it was feeling, but it was also feeling so good that I just couldn’t bring myself to stop. So I kept on rubbing and rubbing and rubbing and at the same time trying to picture in my mind all those naked girls I’d seen in that Penthouse, as many as I could think of, and then it was like BOOM, I shot off right there in the bathtub. Man, that about scared me to death, that’s for sure. I really thought I’d hurt myself or something. I didn’t know what had just happened, just that it scared the shit out of me and that it had felt really strange and really good, all at the same time.

Then it dawned on me a little later that night, after I’d gone to bed and was thinking about what had happened, that what I’d done in the bathtub was abused myself, in the way that the Witnesses are always talking about self-abuse. That’s when I finally figured out that that’s what they meant by “self-abuse.” I’d heard a bunch of talks before at the Kingdom Hall, where they mentioned self-abuse a lot, but I never knew what they meant by it. It usually comes up when the subject of the talk is some kind of sexual immorality, like adultery and fornication and stuff like that. Whoever is giving the talk will usually quote the scripture that says, “Deaden therefore your body members that are upon the earth, as respects fornication, uncleanness, sexual appetite, hurtful desire, and covetousness.” Then he’ll say something like, “And we especially want to warn you younger Brothers and Sisters against the evils of self-abuse. Jehovah God has lovingly provided the marriage arrangement as the means by which we are to satisfy our sexual desires. A young self-abuser is in effect trying to cheat God, by trying to obtain satisfaction without paying the price of assuming and shouldering the responsibilities of marriage. We therefore encourage you to deaden, not excite, your body members, as the scripture just read admonishes.”

Well, for the longest time I had no idea what they were even talking about, what self-abuse was, and I wasn’t about to ask anyone, either. I figured the less I knew about sexual immorality and self-abuse and any other stuff that I wasn’t supposed to be doing in the first place, the better off I was, because it’s a really bad and serious thing to get involved in that stuff, according to the Witnesses. Especially when they said that self-abuse could easily lead to other bad things, like homosexuality. I definitely didn’t want to turn into a queer, because that’s like the worst thing in the world to be, according to the Witnesses, so I didn’t even want to know what self-abuse was, just so I wouldn’t be tempted to do it.

But I found out what it was anyway, by accident, by myself, and let me tell you, I’ve been feeling a lot of guilt about it, too, ever since then, because of all the things I just told you. I try real hard not to do it so much, mainly because I don’t want to take the chance of turning into a fag, but also because I know Jehovah disapproves of it. To tell you the truth, I think that’s why I’ve been having such a hard time being a Jehovah’s Witness lately, the last year or so, because that’s when I learned how to jerk off, about a year ago, and ever since then I’ve had a really guilty conscience about it, and I think probably that Jehovah has removed his blessing from me, which has caused my heart to harden to the Truth and made my attitude about going to the Kingdom Hall and all turn really bad, and my attitude about all that stuff wasn’t all that great to begin with. So at first, I was able to control myself most of the time, I’d only abuse myself every once in a while, like maybe once or twice a month or so. But one day at school a while back, I was in lunch period with Wendall and Wallace, and we were talking and eating our strawberry ice cream sandwiches as usual, going back and forth to the ice cream counter, just to get Kathy Lendover to bend way over into the ice cream box, the same way we’re always doing, which I told you about before. And that particular day Kathy was wearing her cheerleading suit, which of course is really short, so every time she bent over the side of the ice cream counter, we could see her little red cheerleading panties and practically her whole ass, which really looked good, let me tell you. And then Wallace said something like, “Man, she’s driving me crazy. I’m gonna have to get out the old vaseline soon as I get home today!” And Wendall laughed at that, and I laughed too, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what Wallace had meant. But then I got to thinking about it later for some reason, and I figured out that Wallace was talking about jerking off. So that night before I took my bath, I looked in our medicine cabinet and found some vaseline, and I took a big gob of it and started rubbing myself up with it real good, while I pictured in my mind Kathy Lendover’s ass bent over the ice cream counter, and when I shot off, it felt better than it ever did before. So that’s when I really got hooked on jerking off, when I found out how good it felt to do it with vaseline or hand lotion or something slippery like that. Now I just can’t stop. Now I do it all the time, even though I know it’s bad for me. It still makes me feel guilty and all, but I can’t help it.

I finished taking my bath, and went on back to my bedroom. I was tired and ready to go to sleep. Freddie was already in his bed. He didn’t say anything. So I got in my bed and turned off the light and stared at the ceiling and thought about how guilty I was feeling because I’d just jerked off, and about all the other bad things I’d done that day, and wondered whether or not I should try to pray. You see, I used to pray a silent prayer every night before I went to sleep, but then I got to where I wasn’t doing it so much anymore, because I’d been feeling so guilty about all the bad things I’m always doing. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you gotta approach Jehovah with a clean conscience, or He won’t listen to your prayer, and my conscience hasn’t been worth a hoot for a long, long time. But I was feeling so bad and miserable about everything, I figured I’d go ahead and pray, it couldn’t do no harm, that’s for sure. So I closed my eyes and silently said the same prayer I always say, even though the Witnesses believe you shouldn’t recite the same thing over and over when you pray, like you’re reading it out of a prayer book or something, because Jehovah wants to hear what’s in your heart, not something you’ve memorized from somewhere. But I never know what to say when I pray, because I’m already feeling really guilty about everything, and worried that Jehovah disapproves of me and is not gonna listen to anything I’ve got to say anyway. So I always end up saying the same thing every time. It ain’t much, but it’s about all I can do. So I prayed what I always pray:

Jehovah God, the most kind merciful Father in the Heavens, I bow down before your throne of undeserved kindness and beg for the forgiveness of my many sins and short comings. I ask that you will be with me each day, to guide and protect me, and help me to do what is right and pleasing to you, even though I know I fall short in many, many ways. I thank you for all the blessings you have given me and pray that you will continue to do so. I pray that your will be done in all the world, that very soon you will destroy this present wicked system of things and replace it with a righteous new order under the rule of your Son, Christ Jesus. And I pray for a better heart. I pray all these things in the name of your Son, Christ Jesus. Amen.

That’s usually where I always stop, but before I even realized it, I added

And please don’t let Tom Johnston die. Amen.

Then I went to sleep.






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