Little Junction

Coming back from Kansas City, Joanie snuggled up to him. Her parents were away for the weekend, so Frank figured he could manage this thing. He said, "We wouldn't have to go back, you know. Your parents are out of town, you said, and—"


"They'll call, though. We have to go back."


"Oh."


She touched his arm. "We could stay overnight at my house."


"We could?"


She gripped his hand. They were on the interstate, only thirty miles from home.


They hadn't had sex yet, just fooled around, with Frank running his hands up inside Joanie's blouse feeling her breasts and running them down inside her panties. She'd once felt him up too, but that was all. They'd been going together for eight months, and Frank knew Joanie'd been had by at least three guys. He could name them off, two of them from Benton City and some guy from St. Louis, a friend of the family. That had all occurred before he started going out with her, but he kept thinking about it. The two guys from Benton City were like him, good in school, sports, plenty of extracurricular activities, one of them heading off for Rolla to be an engineer. The other went to M.U. and was planning to be a vet. Joanie went with both of them the year before, and even back then, Frank had wanted her, mainly because he couldn't get over that pouty little mouth and those big boobs. He wanted to get his hands on her.


On the way back to Joanie's house, Frank kept thinking about how nice it was going to be. They'd sleep in Joanie's queen-size bed, with the peach colored comforter, and they wouldn't have to get up until eight or nine the next morning. In that time, they could do it two, three times. He'd call his parents at the next stop from his cell phone, tell them he was taking Joanie back, but he'd made arrangements to go back and stay overnight with a friend down in K.C., a guy he knew from wrestling. They'd believe it. They wouldn't have any reason not to believe it.

**********

When he pulled into Joanie's place, he told her they'd better park in the garage because of what he'd told his parents. They pulled in, Frank got out of the car, went around, pulled the garage door down by the brass handle. Joanie was getting out on her side. She smiled at him, closed the car door with her purse strapped over her arm and her sweater folded over the other. They went inside.


"Want something to drink?" Her voice sounded high, tinny. "I'm thirsty. You?"


"For you," he said, and put his arms around her. He placed one hand on her breast.


"Not now," said Joanie. "Really, my mouth is dry. We haven't had anything to drink for at least two hours."


"So let's make something," Frank said. He went for glasses, got out a two-liter Coke, got ice.


Joanie helped him pour.


They sat at the kitchen table. "Your parents weren't expecting this, huh?" said Frank.


"What?"


"You know."


"No," said Joanie, reaching out to place her hand on his. "No, they'd be real surprised."


"You think they would, really, though?" Frank said. "They did it, too, you know. How'd you get started, right?" He knew it was the dumbass thing to say, but he couldn't think of anything else. He'd had sex before, plenty—well, not plenty, but with two other girls the summer before. Girls he knew would do it, and he felt stupid afterwards on both occasions. He wanted it with Joanie because he liked her. He was really attracted to her.


"Yeah, well . . .," Joanie said, "but they were married when they got me started. I don't think my parents ever had sex before they got married. Not to each other, anyway."


"You don't know that." Frank had to laugh. "You think they'd tell you?"


Joanie blushed. "My mom would. I know she would."


"Oh, hell," said Frank. He brought his fist down hard on the table.


"What's a matter?" Joanie set her Coke down.


"Well," said Frank, "I was counting on this." He scooted his glass slightly on the table. "And I can see—"


Joanie smiled, rubbed his arm. "I know you were. I'm not saying no, but maybe we ought to wait just a little. Besides, I'm kind of tired." She sat there looking at him.


Frank felt himself getting angry. He didn't want to get angry though. He didn't want to ruin a perfectly good night. And he did want Joanie to go to bed with him. Only a few rooms away was a bed that could contain the two of them. He had rubbers with him. He'd bought them at that Texaco where he'd made the phone call home. How difficult was it? Why'd Joanie want to complicate it? Why'd women always do that?


"Maybe . . ." said Frank, "maybe we ought to watch a little TV first. Microwave a little popcorn, spike our drinks with a little of that stuff from your dad's bar."


Joanie laughed. "You're something." She grabbed him by the hand, and they went on into the living room together and sat down on the couch. Frank took the remote control and flipped through the channels until they got to a movie. Joanie leaned against him. They put on the popcorn. Frank said let's get something from your dad's bar, a little of that Scotch, but Joanie squeezed his arm. Frank felt on her breasts, ran his hands on her thighs, got the flat of his hand inside her panties. Finally, he went for the top hook of her bra, but she said no. "Not now, Frank."


A couple minutes later, Frank tried again.


"Don't you know the meaning of no?" Joanie pushed him away. "I don't want my bra off."


"Why not?" cried Frank. "I just don't understand. This could have been a good night. It looked like it was going to be one, but then you got thirsty, you got tired, you didn't want to do what we'd planned to do—or anything. Tell me what the hell's the problem?" He knew he'd gone too far. Felt his gut tighten, his throat go raw. Joanie got up, ran away. Down the hall to her room, slam-ming the door. He sat in the living room, feeling stupid, angry with himself, lonely, and he watched only a few more moments of some movie about Grecian sailors before he decided to go back and see if he could make things better. He'd done this so many times—how many times?


He carefully turned the knob. It wasn't locked. He opened it just slightly. The pale moonlight in the room revealed the outline of Joanie's body, the curve of her shoulders and hips. She was lying almost face down in her bed without the comforter on her, very still, not shaking, maybe not crying.


Frank made his way to the bed. He tried not to run into anything, not make a sudden noise. When he was on the side of her bed, a couple feet away, he whispered her name. She turned over. He couldn't see her face very well because of the darkness, and for a moment he had the strangest sensation that this wasn't Joanie, perhaps her mom, or someone else. But of course that wasn't true; it had to be Joanie.


"Yes?" She sounded weary, not particularly angry. She grabbed the comforter and pulled it up over her.


"I'm sorry," Frank said. He knelt, placing one hand on the bed.


"No, you're not." Joanie shook her head. "You're sorry we didn't do it. That's all you're sorry about."


"No," said Frank. "I'm sorry for what I said in there. I didn't mean that—not at all."


"You think I'm an easy lay." Joanie turned over, her back to him. "That's why you wanted to go out with me in the first place, wasn't it? You thought you'd get into my pants without trying. But to me, that's not a little thing—it's big. Very big." The moonlight sent a band of light across her face, and as she moved to speak, it moved up and down, first on her forehead, then across her nose. Once he caught her eyes, and they looked like blue ball bearings, hard and shiny.


"No," said Frank. "No."


Joanie began to cry. "Well, you won't get the opportunity. I'll never let you in my pants. You'll never get anything off of me, ever. Period." She turned over and cried hard into her pillow. Frank crept out of the room.

********** Frank has to wonder. Joanie dropping him for Wally Arnie, that dumbshit from Little Junction?


She ought to know better than link up with some guy from Little Junction. What's she thinking? No football and basketball there, no academic meets of any kind, and the kids down there are generationally the products of incestuous family lines. You can't say that about Benton City because it's close to Kansas City—just get on the interstate—and a lot of Benton City people even work in Kansas City and have for some time. Marry people from there. Things swap around. But Little Junction's this dirty little hole off Route B, 441 people, grocery store threatening to close for the last ten years, gas station with one pump, two-room post office, and the Little Junction R-7 School, with Kindergarten through twelfth—some classes with only six or eight students in them, less than a hundred total.


Wally Arnie's either going to stay in Little Junction and help his dad farm, or he'll leave and go work at the chicken parts factory in Benton City. Both probably.


He, Frank, has a lot more to offer Joanie than that. He's off to Missouri University in a couple weeks, majoring in business. Joanie's going to Benton City Community College, and they could get together over the weekends, no sweat. The idea that now, in the third week of August, she trades him in for Wally Arnie is more than he can stomach. Arnie barely graduated, chews tobacco. He and his friends go mudding in their trucks, stinking drunk, one of them killed when the truck they were screwing around with went into a pond last winter—that's the size of it with Wally Arnie. On the other hand, Frank's told Joanie lots of times how great it looks for them. They can wait it out til he graduates with a business degree, see each other plenty on weekends, and she'll be down there on the Columbia campus in no time, just as soon as she finishes up her two-year associates degree in secretarial science at Benton City CC. They can get married then, or live together, but anyway they'll be together, him finishing up school, her working, and then a few years down the road—unless he goes on to graduate school in business—they'll be off for Kansas City. It'll be easy then, for sure, two incomes, a really nice place to rent until they buy a house.


Today's Friday, their night, and he pounds on her front door, pushes his way in, says just what the hell's going on here, anyway? Wally Arnie's better than him? Think how stupid you're being—yeah stupid. Arnie, big dumbass. He, Frank, graduating salutatorian, missing valedictorian by one fucking letter grade in one course, silly English 4 under Mrs. Dyer. Couldn't ever get it right, all those dumbshit grammar rules, comma before this, comma after that, who or whom--who knew? Who could keep it all straight? Little stuff. Things that didn't matter in the least. But look what he's accomplished anyway, 3.9 something average, All State varsity wrestling and track, six different clubs and organizations, student body president his junior and senior years.


"So just what is it?" He throws his hands out. "Why Wally Arnie? He's a fucking drunk."


"You don't have any right to curse at me," Joanie snaps. She's stretched out in the brown vinyl recliner. Has a dark blue ballpoint pen in her hand she's clicking.


"I'll bet the hell Wally Arnie curses at you," Frank sneers, and he flops on the matching brown vinyl couch, throwing his feet up on the stack of Better Homes and Gardens and House Beautiful on the coffee table.


"You know my mother doesn't like that," Joanie warns. She runs her tongue over bright pink lipstick. She's dressed to kill. Tight jeans, white tank top, clean white Nikes. "You don't have to act that way just because you're not getting what you want. It's not like I shouldn't have some say in all this."


"Yeah, right," Frank says. He removes his feet from off the magazines. "Okay, then, just what is it Arnie's got you want so much? You just tell me."


"I told you. I don't need to tell you again." Joanie runs one hand down her jeans. They're the jeans he bought for her from the GAP last month when they went to that mall in Independence. He recognizes them, the way they fit just so over her shoe tops when she lounges in that recliner.


"No. You lay it all out," Frank says. "You tell me what that asshole's got. I wanta hear it again."


"I don't like the way you're talking. Using language like that. A man that's big enough to control himself doesn't talk that way," Joanie says, and she shakes her head, shaming him. "Arnie, though. He's nice. I told you. He's not always yelling, like you. Cursing me. And I happen to like him. Just like him. Why do I have to explain that?" She stares at the ballpoint, ignoring him.


"You like him." Frank repeats it. "You two doing it a lot? That what you like?"


Joanie's lips suddenly clamp together, like sandstone. "What did you just say?" She throws the ballpoint down.


"You heard me." Frank's not budging on this. "That's what it is, all right. That's all it can be." Some place in his right ear itches. He scratches it with his index finger.


"You just leave," Joanie screams, and she gets up, rushes toward him, shoves him hard. "I don't want you around me anymore. Ever again." She runs out of the living room, down the hall.


Frank remains on the couch studying the clock above the mantel. He puts his head in his hands. Downstairs, in the basement, Joanie's father, Bill, works away with his power tools. Now and then the grinding, or sawing, stops, and Frank waits for it to resume. Eventually, he gets up, goes into the kitchen, gets himself a can of Coke from the refrigerator the way he always did when he spent evenings watching TV at Joanie's house. Then he sits down with it for a while, looking toward the hall, hoping Joanie will come back, tell him it's all a mistake, that she's gone nuts or something. That she'll never, in all her life, have the slightest thing to do with Wally Arnie from Little Junction.


Maybe he ought to knock on Joanie's door . . . but no, why do that? Finally, he gets up off the couch, stomps on the blue ballpoint on the beige carpet, and heads on out, shutting the door loudly. Outside, his '83 Buick parked along the street looks miserably abandoned.

********

He'll have it out with Arnie. Find out what the little bastard's done to make Joanie like him. Drag it out of him.


It's eight o'clock, and Frank knows Arnie will be out cruising in his truck, and that can mean anywhere in the area from Benton City to Jonestown, over east thirty miles. He isn't likely to go to St. Joseph like some of them do; he's not in that crowd that goes over there and watches the local girls play softball. He'll be likely, at some point tonight, to pull into the parking lot of Piggy Wiggly in Benton City and sit in his truck with Phil Axel and Larry Webber. Two guys who graduated a couple years back and work at that lid factory north of town.


Frank'll wait in the Pig parking lot himself, and as soon as Arnie shows up in his green Dodge truck, he'll get out of his car, go up to the truck, ask just what the hell Arnie thinks he's doing with Joanie Simpson. His girl. He hasn't gotten farther in his plans than that. He can picture Arnie with that small head of his, like an acorn squash—some of that Little Junction generational incest playing out in a slack jaw and narrowly set eyes—and his wiry body, with left arm hanging loosely out the truck window; then the small, bony hand being shaped into a fist, plug of tobacco under the lower lip shifting, door bursting open and Arnie out of the truck and on him. But Frank figures with his own wrestling experience, he can maybe take Arnie down before he gets a punch in. Still, he's not real sure. He saw Arnie get in a bunch of hard ones—rat-a-tat-tat--against some guy named Buck Brewster, busting his lip, squashing it flat, like mashed tomatoes.


Frank pulls into the Piggly Wiggly lot, steering the car out to the little section close to the exit, where half the kids he knows end up one time or another on a Friday night. Two cars are parked here now, kids he doesn't know very well—sophomores, he figures. Seen them around. Frank turns on the radio, finds the ball game. Now he waits.


Frank watches the road. No sign of Arnie's truck. Cars and trucks pull in now and then with kids crammed in them, smoking and drinking. One car squeals out of the lot and fishtails on Main as it cuts east toward Jonestown.


Eleven o'clock. Frank gives up. Begins to drive around, trying to figure out what to do. Stops off at McDonald's, gets a large Coke. Slows when he hears a noise like a piece of wood dropped on sheet metal. Wump. Heard it enough before. What is it? Some big sign his car's on its way out? He cuts through neighborhoods in the direction of Joanie's place. A half block away he sees Arnie's truck parked on the street.


Frank pulls up behind it. Sits there.


Drapes are pulled. Inside, what's going on? He can imagine Arnie's nasty tobacco-stained lips against Joanie's, grimy hand around her cool white neck. She's dirtying herself. She's going to be sorry for it too, later.


Three days from now he'll be packing his stuff in the trunk of his car, heading off for college. He'll move into the dorm room with that guy from Detroit, guy he talked to only once on the phone, doesn't know at all, guy who sounded cold, distant, and busy. Back here, in Benton City, Joanie'll be letting Wally Arnie find his way deep inside her body.


Frank gets out of his car. Approaches the back of the truck. Leans over the tailgate and notices, with the help of the street light, two tires, a jack, some bailing wire, and a burlap sack, filled with something. Frank pulls himself up, gets inside the bed of the truck. Grabs the burlap sack, tries to pick it up. It's wet, heavy. Sand? He looks for a sharp instrument. His hands plunge in the darkness and land, finally, on something that feels like a screwdriver.


Frank goes back, opens the tailgate. Makes a loud, banging noise. He looks at the drapes. Nothing. No stirring. Begins dragging the bag of sand back to the rear of the truck. Jumps down, then drags it over the opened bed of the truck so it hits the pavement with a hard, wet sound.


Frank remembers. Goes back to his car, gets the large McDonald's Coke cup, pours half its contents on the pavement. Then goes to the sandbag, begins digging the cup into the bag, filling it up. The wet sand clings to the sides of the cup like cement. The sand is tightly packed, and Frank kicks the bag to loosen it up. Fills the cup.


He goes around to the gas tank.


He looks toward Joanie's house. Something inside him, in his chest, slips. Like a loose hunk of flesh.


He places the cup against the opening of the gas tank. Don't think about this right now. Such a little thing, after all. But some things—you just can't let them slide. Just get the job done, then think all you want. When the sand refuses to move through, Frank pokes it hard with his finger.

---

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