Silent Retreats Read online

  The crumpled ghost of their Chevy rusted most of the summer and part of the fall where the wrecker let it down, half a block from the Dairy Queen in the wreck lot of Ford Motor Sales. I don't know what the fascination was, but sometimes I'd go by there. Through the crunched, blue-tinted windows, in the folds of the damp, bent seats, I could see a Beatles album and a soggy package of Kools. There were stains of blood in the driver's seat. One of their shoes was decomposing in the gravel next to the car. I'd find myself staring. This was before Vietnam really got going. Back then, the whole idea of people dying who were about my age was a rare and somehow fascinating thing. The Arcola girls, Karen and Marie, they were the first I remember.

  There was one Arcola girl named Rhonda Hart, a wild girl with dark brown hair and strange, blue catlike eyes. Each Saturday night, late, when the dance was almost over and the room was humid and warm like hot breath, a group would gather around Rhonda, who was by then dancing alone, doing, if the chaperones weren't looking, a pantomime of taking her clothes off to a grinding-on-and-on rendition of "Louie, Louie" that the local bands had turned into the theme of the summer.

  I remember that her legs were skinny, but she was round and ample under a pure-white sweatshirt, and her menacing cat eyes stared into the group around her, mostly boys, her lips pouting like a bad girl. She'd make-believe unzip her candy-colored red shorts at the back, make-believe slip her panties off her hips and slide them down the skinny legs to the cold cork looking floor of the West Ridge community building. A little kick at the last and, imaginary pale pink, they sailed through the imaginary air. And on she danced, her arms out to you. She was pretty good.

  At Webster Park there was an old bandstand the Arcola girls used to gather at on summer nights. They would park their cars in the deep shadows. The local high school boys would go there, too, and in the black shade of the park maples they would all play, smoke, make out, the Lord knew what else (there were always whisperings, strange rumors going around). These were country girls. Maybe some of them might not have gotten a second look from the boys in Arcola, but in West Ridge they were exotic and different, from a place that, to us, then, seemed far away. They made the air palpable with sex and play.

  The first time I ever heard a girl say "fuck," it was an Arcola girl, and she didn't say it mean or loud, but it seemed to echo all through Webster Park, down the length of it into the cluster of pine trees, beyond that to the ball diamonds, the deserted playground and city pool, the walking gardens.

  "You'd love to go out with one of those girls," my girlfriend would sometimes say.

  We'd be at the drive-in and one of their cars might spin through. The curb-hops would jump back to avoid it. I might crane my neck to see who it was.

  "Cathy says they're all dumb as posts," she'd say. Cathy was my girlfriend's friend.

  "Cathy should talk," I told her. I'd turn up the radio, the manic, rabble-rousing prattle of Dick Biondi, WLS.

  That summer a couple of classmates of mine, Bob Reid and Buzz Talbott, slipped into a slumber party in Arcola. They climbed through a bedroom window, bringing with them their sleeping bags and beer. Rumors were it had been some great party. The rumor was that somebody's farmer-dad caught them, though, and there had been a shotgun fired and a quick getaway. Bob Reid, and a kid he paid who was taking shop, had spent an afternoon rubbing out and painting a couple of pockmarks on the white tailgate of his dad's pickup.

  Sarah, a buxom little Arcola cheerleader, maybe the prettiest in the whole group, got pregnant that summer and disappeared. They said she went to Texas. It seemed like everything you heard about the Arcola girls was an exotic, strange, wild tale—full of skin and possibilities.

  So one Friday afternoon I called up Rhonda Hart to ask her out.

  "Tonight?" She seemed real indignant. "Out where" she said. "For chrissake," she added. She was chewing gum. "Give a girl some notice sometime, will ya?" It was her Mae West act. She was laughing.

  "Mattoon. A movie. Champaign—I don't know."

  "Mattoon a movie Champaign you don't KNOW?"

  Shouldn't have called, I thought to myself. Her voice was hard and confident. The Righteous Brothers were playing in the background. I'm different from her, I was thinking. She knows more about the world.

  "We could just go talk or something. I don't know," I said. It was all wrong.

  "I'm not sure I know who you are even,” she said.

  "My name's Tom Nichols,” I told her. I tried to explain myself to her. Told her I was a friend of Bob Reid and ran cross-country with Talbott. Tried to recall for her times when I was the guy with somebody she did know when we were all doing something she might remember, such as getting a pizza or buying a Coke at the Sinclair station like a bunch of us did one night and all stood around making wisecracks.

  "Well, let's drive around West Ridge—we don't have to go anyplace special,” she said.

  "That'd be okay,” I said. "I thought a movie maybe."

  She was quiet a moment. "So you don't wannabe seen with me or what?"

  "Nah. I just want—I don't know—quiet or something, that's all."

  "Right." She laughed. She really liked that one.

  "Wanna go dancing?" she said. "Up at the Chances R? I heard the Artistics are up there. I love their lead singer—he looks exactly like Elvis. Let's go dancing."

  Sometimes I'd see her cruising with Bob Reid in his pickup. I knew she occasionally went out with him, and he was never known to dance. So what did they do when they went out? Couldn't we just do that, whatever it was?

  "Okay,” I said. "We'll find a dance or something."

  "You don't sound real enthused."

  "I'm enthused."

  "You don't sound like it."

  "Look,” I said, "I must be a little enthused, I'm calling you up."

  "Down, boy,” she said, laughing, chewing her gum. She thought about it for a while.

  "Don't make it a gift from the gods or something,” I said finally.

  "Right,” she said. “Hang on." She put the phone against something soft to muffle the sound, and was shouting. Then I heard the phone clank down and she was gone, to ask her mom. You'd always forget that Arcola girls had to ask their moms.

  "Yeah, I can go," she said when she came back all breathless. "What time?"

  "Eight. Suit yourself," I said.

  "Dancing, right?" She seemed to be setting it out as a condition.

  "Eight o'clock," I said.

  "Seven or eight?" she said.

  "Whatever."

  After I hung up I went out in the backyard and sat in a lawn chair. I was nervous about this. Rhonda seemed different from my girlfriend, rougher and faster. Then my sister yelled from the house that I had a call.

  "Hi. This is Rhonda," she said. I didn't say anything. I expected a cancellation. "Remember me?" she said, and laughed. "One more thing. Let's make it around ten-thirty, and you meet me at the bandstand at the park. What do you say?"

  "Ten-thirty?"

  "Right." She was talking quieter than in the first call.

  "No way," I said.

  "I got something going I forgot about. I can get loose by ten-thirty."

  "No."

  "What's wrong?"

  "It's too late."

  "Well," she said, "I want to introduce you to my friends. I'll ride up with Kelly, and you can bring me home. You know Kelly?" Kelly had the silky, white-blond hair, freckles.

  "Yeah, I know her."

  "Well, I just talked to her, and she doesn't know you."

  "I think I'm losing control of this."

  "Ha." She seemed to fade away. Then she was back. "You can handle it. See you at the bandstand. Ten-thirty. Wait if I'm late." She hung up.

  At eight I was on the highway to Arcola. I'd decided to try to get to Rhonda before Kelly did. The sun was going down and the Illinois sky was red in the west. The locusts were loud, wheeting in a pulsating rhythm. Much later the moon would rise full and red, blood moon. Jupiter would linger n
ear it all across the sky, stalking. The whole thing was a mistake.

  I'd never been to Arcola on my own mission, but I found her house, using the phone book in the booth just outside a place downtown called the Youth Center. I parked down the street on the opposite side and watched the house in my mirror. It was dusk. I got out of the car and walked back toward the place, trying to think what to say. I hadn't thought of anything by the time I knocked and Rhonda's mother came to the door. She was all fixed up, maybe thirty-nine or forty years old. Her perfume wafted through the screen door.

  "Hi," I said. "Is Rhonda home?" I told her my name.

  "You're Tom? I thought she was with you," she said.

  I turned around to see if she was, a little joke. "Nope."

  Rhonda's mom didn't laugh.

  "I'm kind of late," I said. "Are you sure she isn't here?"

  "God, I'm almost sure she's gone," she said, "but I'll check." Her voice was raspy, had that same worldliness as Rhonda's.

  She asked me in and had me sit on the couch. There was what appeared to be a half-gone seven-and-seven on the coffee table. I heard her go up the stairs. There was a cat on the couch with me, staring at me, and there was the tank of fish in the room that I'd been able to see from the car. The whole room had the fragrance of Rhonda's mom's perfume.

  "Well, I can't find her," she said when she came back in. "I think she went out already. I thought I heard you come to pick her up half an hour ago. I'm really sorry."

  I sat there on the couch, looking at her.

  "There are a couple of places you might find her, is all I can tell you," she said, sitting down next to the cat and facing me. I looked out the window into the Arcola night. I noticed that sometimes she herself was looking out, over my shoulder.

  I didn't say anything. I didn't move.

  "She might have gone to West Ridge, is all I know. Although if she did she's in trouble."

  Rhonda's mother was wearing a cotton blouse, a tight dark skirt. Her deeply tanned hand was on the back of the couch near me. Her fingernails were ruby red. The house was quiet, immaculately clean. My quietness was giving her some trouble. On the wall was a picture of Rhonda when she was little. Next to her her father, a truck driver. They were posing in front of his fancy new semi.

  "I'm very sorry about this," she said to me. Her teeth were kind of crooked.

  "Maybe she took off because I was late or something."

  "I don't think so. There must have been some misunderstanding. She was looking forward to this. She really was. She probably told you, I've had her grounded for a couple of weeks because of that drunken slumber party business. She's supposed to be with you right now. The condition for this whole thing was that she was going to the movies with you. She's in trouble."

  "Well," I said. "It was a misunderstanding maybe."

  She was very pretty in a grown-up way, as she shrugged her shoulders and half smiled at me. "Well, she's in trouble." Rhonda's mom was standing up then, my invitation to go. "Good-night, Tom," she said. "I'm sorry about this."

  On the way back to the car I looked up at the sky. Moonless, clear as a bell. But a moon was coming—I remembered that from the night before. As I was pulling away, I noticed that a car behind me was passing slowly. I thought it might be Rhonda and Kelly. I drove around the block, and in those few moments Rhonda's mom had turned off the lights and locked up and was darting across the dark yard to the car. It was a white Oldsmobile Starfire with the wide band of stainless steel on the side. I couldn't see the driver before the arching trees and distance intervened.

  I imagined that Rhonda had gone north with Kelly and that West Ridge was now aware of my foiled, clandestine date. I decided to drive around the streets of Arcola for a while. West Ridge and Arcola, they were little towns. You could stand in the center of either of them, facing north, and see the bean fields at the city limits to the left and the right; standing there at dawn you could hear the roosters welcome the day out on the farms. In both towns there were the same white clapboard houses with an occasional red brick estate, the same livery stalls down along the Illinois Central railroad where the Amish parked when they came in from the country to shop. There was a grain elevator on the railroad, too, and a lumberyard, and an old hotel downtown. All the themes of West Ridge played out in a variation in Arcola.

  I passed the Arcola policeman parked in the shadows up an alley, waiting. I could see the glow from his cigar as I passed. I would turn left at this corner, right at this one, for no reason, but it was a small town and soon I was in front of Rhonda's house again. The lights were all off, except for a lamp near the fish tank in the living room. I decided to park and sit a while.

  Before long Kelly's car pulled up next to mine. Rhonda looked over at me. I felt like I'd been caught doing something. Then Kelly pulled ahead of me and parked. I saw the car door open, and Rhonda was coming back my way, walking like a curb-hop in her tennis shoes.

  "Is it you?" she said. No recognition whatever.

  "I thought we could go south from here and catch a movie in Mattoon," I said.

  Now Kelly was coming back, too.

  "That's great," Rhonda said, "but it's not the plan. What about my friend?" She introduced me to Kelly, who did not quite look at me. She'd been kind of pretty at a distance, cruising by, but close up she had a hard mouth and a spacey stare. Both girls were chewing gum. I turned up WLS real loud. "What about my friend?" she said, talking over it.

  "Does Kelly have a date tonight?" I asked Rhonda.

  "No."

  "You do, I thought."

  Rhonda looked at Kelly impatiently, like I was missing the point.

  "She can come with us if you want," I said.

  "Now listen," she said. "I've got a problem with this. What are you doing at my house?"

  I looked up beyond the trees, at the ARCOLA in big block letters on the water tower, lighted from somewhere below. I had once climbed the West Ridge water tower.

  "I mean this is real creepy," she said. She looked back up the street, chewing her gum mouth-open style. "Did you blow this thing with my mom?"

  "Blow what?" I said. "She seemed real nice." Before she could say anything, I said, "Your mom says you're supposed to be with me. Let's just have an ordinary date, wha'd'ya say . . ."

  "I've got something I've got to do, that's what I say. Don't you understand that?" She looked at Kelly. "I think he blew it with my mom." Then back at me. "I've got something I've got to do," she said.

  "Yeah, yeah. Do that tomorrow night. Go with me now."

  "I'm busy tomorrow night."

  We both laughed at that one.

  "Okay, well, Kelly and me talked about this," she said. "I was thinking maybe you'd come with us."

  I stared ahead. No answer.

  Finally she said, "Would you do this, please? Park the car over at the Youth Center and get in with us—we'll swing by and get it later. You know the center?"

  I was thinking about it.

  "C'mon! I'm in a big hurry." She walked back to the car. Almost there, she turned around and gestured big. "I'm in a hurry."

  I parked my car at the Youth Center and climbed in with them. I sat in the back seat. They paid very little attention to me as we drove around. It was clear they were up to something. Maybe they even went a little out of their way to be mysterious.

  "She's supposed to be a good one," I heard Kelly say to Rhonda.

  "Right. I can imagine." She hummed the tune they play on Twilight Zone.

  "Seriously, she's got a certificate from some institute or something. What time is it?"

  Kelly reached into a grocery bag in the front seat. She pulled out a jar of kosher dills and handed it back to me. "Open this and you get the first one," she said, keeping her eyes on the street. I opened it, took a pickle, and handed the jar up front. They both chomped pickles for a while.

  "What time is it?" Kelly asked again. The radio answered the question.

  "Slow down, Nutso," Rhonda said as we approac
hed the alley where the cop was. "Hey, Fat Jack!" she shouted and waved as we went by. He remained where he was.

  When the evening train whistle sounded from out north of town, Kelly turned around in an alley and headed back toward the downtown. By the time we got there, the train was through and the Oak Street crossing gates were going back up to let people pass, except nobody was waiting. We drove down a lane along the railroad, a sort of alley. We went alongside the steel quonset-frame warehouses of the local broomcorn factory, passed the railroad depot completely closed down and boarded up, and pulled up in front of an old trailer. Dogs were barking off in the dark.

  "Where are we?" I asked them.

  "We're at," Kelly said, "a . . . dark . . . old . . . house trailer."

  "Wonderful."

  She laughed nervously, stared at the place, snapped her gum. Nobody came out. "Looks pretty dark," she said in a loud whisper. The nervous laugh again. "Shall I honk?"

  Kelly lightly tapped the horn a couple of times and blinked the lights. The neighborhood dogs intensified their barking. The trailer had burned at some time and had scorch marks above the windows. Several were completely out.

  Kelly turned around in her seat and asked me if I would go check in the trailer to see if the woman was in there. She reached down under the dash. "It's worth another pickle to me." She handed me a flashlight.

  "What woman?" I asked.

  "Jesus! Just go see if anybody's in that trailer. Okay?"

  So I went to have a look. The only thing not burned inside the trailer was one overstuffed couch. On it, sure enough, was a woman dressed in black. She was staring straight ahead and the flashlight did not seem to startle her. "Ah. You're here," she said. "Are you Kelly?" she asked.

  "No, ma'am. Kelly would be a girl."

  "What's that?" she said, coming to the door.

  "Kelly would be a girl, ma'am," I said.

  "She would, would she? If what?" With my help she stepped down from the trailer to the ground.

  "She's in the car, ma'am," I said. She was dressed in a black flowing robe. She smelled like scorched mattresses.