CHAPTER 2
THE GLOOM OF THE AUDITORIUM had been perennially deepened by the shadows cast upon it from the giant cottonwood trees surrounding it. Shadows that roamed over its rows of endless worn shingles, on the grounds that bedplated its weather-beaten sides, moved and swayed in the moonlight as if some unseen hand was fanning their decaying bark. In Cotton, the auditorium meant a perfect floor to dance on … a good time; but to Gaylord it was an ugly thing of the past, a leap into the days of his childhood.
It had none of the architectural beauty which distinguished so many public buildings in the South. Apparently, it belonged to that period of square-shaped ones which had been built with no thought of beauty, only for quick and easy construction. And, if Gaylord could have chosen the building where dances were to be held he would never have chosen this one. He clenched his teeth together and looked away from it … looked at the long line of parked cars.
Automatically, he pulled into a vacant space, took the key from the ignition, opened the door and got out. As he stood on the gravel, feeling the large rocks pressing into the soles of his shoes, he locked the door, and then, with one last look at his car, started toward the old structure that centered the public park.
He felt a pang, deep and cutting, seeing couples walking hand in hand towards the auditorium. He would have to walk alone. Why did he always have to be alone? Little biting thoughts of worry began fretting his mind and he was glad for the darkness. Would they think he couldn't get a date? He fingered his soft shirt and unbuttoned the top button. Everyone left their collars wide open. He would be like the rest.
Suddenly, as if to get away from the pressure of his thoughts, he kicked at the sidewalk, saying to himself: "I wish they'd fix these darn walks. These cracks are dangerous. I'd like to tell the Chamber of Commerce a few things." Other things that should have been attended to were stirring in his brain and he wished he had the nerve to tell them it was a shame the open porch was so dimly lighted, the entrance so shabby, the black lettering "Public Auditorium" so much in need of paint. The two small light bulbs should have been freed from the spider webs and dead insects that draped them, too. The thoughts came breaking through—a stout demand breaking before an innate shyness … like dreams … like dreams unresolved.
In protest against them, he screwed up his courage, and walked briskly toward the crowded porch. He noticed again the scarred lettering and outer walls. To him, the very sight of the building brought back unpleasant memories, and with each step he was sorry he had come. He was overawed and chilled by the surroundings; the couples on the porch; and the sensation of complete unfamiliarity with any person around him. It was all caught in the dross of the past; the heartache of loneliness and longing; like an echo out of his childhood calling him back.
The path lay clear ahead to the porch. He could imagine what was being thought under the examining eyes of his classmates. They smiled on passing but— He would have turned back if something within had not urged him on.
"Hi, Gay."
"Oh … hi, Connie."
He stood undecided. He briefly considered mingling with them, but they were together, and the boy with Connie gave him a queer look. He hurried by them but the friendly greeting had helped, had given him new courage to walk across the crowded porch, under the eyes of all these strangers.
Gaylord stood for the most part in silence. Aside from the occasional glances at him, no one seemed to take any special interest in him, and as he moved slowly towards the door, he felt himself becoming absorbed in the gathering.
"Hi, good-looking," a girl's voice rang out.
Gaylord spun around in unbelieving happiness at the tones but the greeting was not for him. He dropped his head quickly. He knew they had seen him … he could feel eyes looking at him, laughing, like a hungry man at the sight of a chicken leg, and his face turned a deep crimson. This embarrassed him even more. He had a sudden flooding sense, that is, he tried to imagine, that all this was just a dream in Looking Glass Land. But this crowd of nonsense impinged very strongly on the real thing. It meant that now his living body, instead of being safe in his bed, breathing deeply of fresh air, would be carted across the porch, bathed in perspiration. This fact disturbed him violently.
Gosh, it was hot. He wished Wanda was by his side. He looked around at the coatless boys and was glad he had not worn one either. He hoped urgently that the powder on his face didn't show too much. His forehead felt so hot. Was his hair all right?
Gaylord put his hands in his pockets, looked at the golden amber peering from the small broken window panes, giving life again to the paint-craving windowsills. The soft beams fell on the moving figures on the dance floor, and now shone on Gaylord's earnest face and handsome physique. He smiled at those he knew, and his movements, without being clumsy, lacked the assurance and grace the others around him possessed. His stomach was still churning inside him and his head was spinning. He shifted again uneasily and glanced over the heads and through the low hanging trees to the line of ugly one-story commercial buildings that faced the park. He felt a quiet sadness reaching into him as he looked at them; so common; so ordinary; so bare of any distinction. Irregular lines of dusty paned windows dingy and deserted in the grey light, topped with tin and wooden awnings, moved before him. They had been built years ago and forgotten. There were one or two that could boast new paint, a lighted window, but the others … nothing more than the inevitable corrugated tin, rusted and fallen apart.
He was unhappy and ill at ease here after all these years, and his thoughts moved idly as he looked at his home town of Cotton. He who dreamed of the Champs Elysées was here among walls of careless time and deserted hands. Tomorrow, many tomorrows, he would still be here in the old familiar routine. When school was over maybe he could get away, away from the town and people he did not belong with. But where … where and with whom did he belong?
Gaylord moved to the rail; his hands resting on it, he gazed into a bed of zinnias. Their blossoms stood straight and proud; their petals coarse and red as flowing blood, their centers deep and mysterious, their leaves long and pointed as knives. He wondered who had planted them and how they had survived in the grass-infested earth. He watched a lightning bug moving silently along the rim of darkness, giving a twinkle made possible by some unseen force, and he felt that he was, himself, caught by forces greater than he, pushed and pulled by incomprehensible currents.
A shrill whistle sounded and a freight train creaked and shook down the tracks that lay beyond the graveled street he had parked on. The depot, surrounded by trees and indifferent shrubbery, was plain in his mind. Several lighted street lamps fronted the orange-colored edifice and as he thought of it he remembered the first time he had waited there for a favorite aunt to arrive. He remembered saying to her: "The railroad tracks cut Cotton in two parts, the north and the south. The south side's the old part of town. Nobody likes it. It's got the auditorium and the post office. But the best side is the north. It has new buildings and the nicest homes."
And his aunt had answered, "And honey, I bet your daddy built his house on the north side, didn't he?"
And he had replied, "How did you know?"
"I just know your daddy," she had answered.
"I don't like it here … I wish we lived in a big city. I hate small towns."
"You do?" Her face had tensed, but she went on, "Honey, you won't have to live here all your life. When you get to be a man you can go any place you want to. And after you've seen large cities, you might not think this little town so bad after all. Large cities are lonely and very cold to strangers sometimes."
That had happened a long time ago … a million years … and he was still here. Nothing had changed. A larger city couldn't have been any colder than this small town. This clannish place with its bullies and farmers. This infested burg he hated because no one thought of him as grown … everyone still called him a boy. Damn them … all of them … every damn, damn one of them.
At times there was an ugliness about him that pressed on his heart, suffocating him. It was like that now. There were people around him but they seemed to be playing by themselves in a grey mountain world. Gaylord caught himself wondering whether the auditorium really existed; the cramped porch, the dirty windows, the dreary lights with their tattered cobwebs and the circle of rust above their dingy glass bowls—the whole combination. He closed his eyes from the fevered dream, except that he knew that the dream lay only in his mind. It was all real as a stone, and all he had to do was open his eyes and re-enter the nightmare.
He opened his eyes and returned to reality. To the bright young faces running from pale pink to deep tans. The dresses of the girls patterned the scene before him with whites, blues and yellows. A boy laughed and affectionately placed his arms around his girl, his white teeth showing against large red lips. How young and happy he seemed. Gaylord wished he might do the same thing with such ease.
Across from him a girl was fingering her eye, her lovely face drawn and frowning while her escort tried to help get the something from her eye. Gaylord watched the two, remembering the time something had gotten in his eye. There had been no one to help him remove it. In fact, a chubby youth had laughed at him. That had happened not too many years back, right beside these walls. He turned and looked at them. Walls … walls that brought back unpleasant memories. Memories of this building.
Inside the wall at which he was staring, he had gone to school. Around its grounds he had cried many times. Tears of fear had filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks after his mother had left him there that first day. Left him alone with strangers. His eyes were resting unseeingly on the wall while he turned over that day in his thoughts. It was chaff blown into his memory never to be forgotten. How cruel they had been at recess, pointing to his white starched suit, teasing and calling him names because he didn't want to play ball with them. For the first time he had been called a sissy. His curly hair had been laughed at; they had pulled at it … hard. He had tried to fight back, but had been pushed into a puddle of muddy water. He remembered getting up from the shimmering foam, crying unintelligibly, only to be pushed back again. He recalled the gush of mud in his hands and the surprised look on the two boys' faces as he had let them have it, full force. He grinned to himself on recalling this but this satisfied feeling was brief. He remembered the tears of that night, and how he had wished to be back in the oil field, living in their three room house instead of in the new home his father had built in this wicked, cruel town. How often he had thought of his lost classmates who had always been so understanding, so loving. How could he bear those grinning faces after knowing those friendly ones?
Something had happened to him that morning long ago. Something had twisted his feelings and his mind had become confused and different from the past calendar of days. A wall began to grow between himself and other boys, mounting higher each day. Each year it stood stronger between his and their hostile world. He turned to girls, played dolls with them, built imaginary houses from the huge pile of firewood stacked at the rear yard of the school. After that first day of school he had steered clear of boys. He was not built differently than they, but he was … in some mysterious way … different.
Gaylord stared into space, and searched his mind for an answer. He wondered now about the impulse that had brought him here. Robert Blake was the unpalatable reason for it; the fact that, underneath all his bashful ways, he still had a powerful desire for Blake's friendship or just to see him. Where was Blake?
A girl pushed against him and he smiled at her. She wore a white sweater and grey skirt, with a little clasp of imitation pearls around her neck; her hair fell in soft rolls about her face; she was at her very prettiest. Gaylord stood and watched her, and two thoughts followed each other through his mind: "I wish I was in her shoes" … "Why, since I was born a boy, can't I be like the rest?"
Gaylord was seized with a feeling of vertigo, an actual dizziness, as though he were teetering at the edge of a precipice, looking into a turbulent sea, resisting an impulse to jump into it.
From this fog of bewilderment, he tried to free himself. He watched a girl skillfully paint her mouth. He listened to every word spoken around him, listened so intensely that they seemed printed on his mind.
Another push lunged him forward almost to the auditorium door. A buzzing sound, mingled with shouts of laughter and music greeted him. A boy beside him said something and giggled happily. Gaylord had not heard the cause for the laughter but he laughed with them.
Gaylord stumbled to the door during the last strains of a song. At the end there was a storm of hand-clapping. The singer hurried back to his seat without bowing. Almost immediately the seven-piece dance orchestra struck up again, and couples jammed the floor.
The hall was large and hot, smelling of wax and mixed colognes. Gaylord stood stiffly looking about as if trying to locate someone. He pressed his lips together and looked at the dancers, joggling on the floor. The trumpeter, blowing deafeningly into the microphone, held his glance for a second. Then he spied Robert Blake on the dance floor. He was dancing with Joy Clay and her hand was resting on his massive shoulders. They reminded him of incidents in novels about love. They did seem like they were in love. It was not pleasant for him but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the dancing couple. Blake was his one link with what he had wanted. Joy was sweet but … gosh, he wished he were she. This existence was only a perfumed glamorous unreality, he realized, like a Hollywood movie about a poor girl who marries a prince. But it was nice to dream about. Nice to think about. Too precious a dreamworld to be broken up; and so he persisted in his fervid pointless imaginings.
"Hi, Gay …"
"Hello, Vic … having a good time?" Gaylord asked.
"I'm trying like hell." Victor's face twisted in a wry grin. The drops of perspiration dropped from his broad forehead. "Sure hot, isn't it."
"I'll say." There was no point in this kind of talk but Gaylord was glad. Vic was a nice boy … He wasn't good-looking and his ears were too big for his head. But he was always nice and friendly.
Victor gave him a big smile. "I'll see ya, Gay."
Gaylord watched him race through the dancing couples. He was fascinated by his ease and speed. Already he had tagged a girl and had her in his arms. He watched them a moment and then Blake and Joy came into view. He watched Joy look up and laugh into the bronze face so close to her own. What did she say, he wondered. Did she say she loved him? Blake did not—and Gaylord was particularly aware of this—he did not look down, at least not until she had slapped the back of his head, and then it had been brief, very brief. Longingly he watched Blake. Watched the grace the slim strong body possessed. He was not envious and the unhappiness inside him seemed to weaken and dissolve itself. It was an emotion not understood. Listlessly, he moved under pressure and let someone pass, the emotion still within him. It was impossible for anyone to deflate this moment no matter how hard they pushed.
"Hello, Bob," he murmured, and then proceeded swiftly through the increasing tide.
He walked by the wooden benches that circled the sides of the hall. Walked past children holding on to each other. They ran in front of him, behind him, in and out of the swaying bodies. They seemed to be everywhere. No one seeing him would have known of the mixed emotions moving behind his smiling countenance. Only the deep blue eyes seemed a little sad as he made his way past them.
He saw a vacant spot at a distant corner and made for it. "At last," he sighed, and sat down on the hard surface.
It was hot in the corner but it was deserted and dark. He was glad for this darkness because from here he could watch almost unnoticed, or so he hoped.
He tried to single out his two friends but it was useless. They had vanished … They were lost in the throng of swaying figures and faces that laughed and shouted, but it didn't bother him now. He was safe and they couldn't see him.
Such wonderful music, and how he loved itl How dull and uninteresting life would be without the strains of the humming violins, the delightful tinkle of the piano, the roughness of the bass. He looked admiringly at the men in the orchestra, wishing he were one of them. Especially the slim vocalist. He looked a little sad, but his eyes were bright and happy. He stared at the singer in admiration and tried to imagine what it would be like to be in his place. He closed his eyes and his mind conjured up a picture of himself; a singer with a big band behind him. Gosh, it would be wonderful to go from city to city, traveling and singing in worlds unknown to him. A world free of emotional sufferings. Cities, states, towns and countries poured out of Gaylord all together, coming from some unseen depths inside him.
Why was there no outlet for him? Why did he have to bury his desires so privately within him, instead of realizing them. Why did Blake impress him so much? Was it because he felt Blake represented areas of experience and knowledge that he himself did not possess? Was something he wanted? Joy was pretty, real pretty. Why was he thinking of Blake and not Joy? Boys at seventeen were all girl crazy. Why wasn't he? He could no more understand this feeling than he could the reason why he acted so oddly superior and aloof. He didn't want to be that way … God knew he didn't, yet his actions betrayed him. He couldn't make advances to boys. He couldn't give them an affectionate slap on the rump or kid them and he always seemed to freeze up at any tentative gestures of friendship they made in his direction. With them he was ill at ease and sensed they felt the same toward him. Girls weren't so bad. He had had dates. In fact, several girls had asked him for rides, or dances, even dates. But Gaylord knew he wasn't considered a good date. Even though he was tall, good-looking and drove a "divine car" (their expression), there was something missing. He just wasn't one of them.
The financial security that his father had achieved had made it possible for him to have almost anything he wanted, and one day when he had wished for a radio-victrola combination, a new expensive model had been delivered the next day.
"And buy all the damn records you want," his father had said. "I'm afraid you wouldn't like the ones I'd select. Charge them to me."
Clayton Le Claire had always been like that. From the very first, he had showered gifts on his son … guns, balls, catchers' mitts.
One day he had even brought home a pony with all the accessories, but it had only left the usual questioning expression on his son's young face.
"Oh, Clay," Carol Le Claire had said with disarming candor, "Gay doesn't care for those things, and anyway if he did, I'd be afraid for him to ride that pony … It might hurt him."
"But he's big enough to have a pony, Carol," Le Claire had answered. "It's so gentle a baby could ride him."
"Gaylord is just a baby, but he's not going to ride it."
"He's a boy, Carol. Let's raise him as one. But I can see he doesn't care for it. I'll take it back like everything else I buy him. But I'm not going to buy him girl's toys even if he likes them. Damn it, Carol you're wrong in raising him like a girl."
Le Claire didn't approve of the things his wife bought their son. He didn't think Gaylord should play with dolls, and sets of dishes, and it made him angry when he came home and found both his wife and son looking through magazines for paper dolls to cut out.
One day Gaylord had come home from school and after noticing his eyes all red and swollen his father had questioned him.
"What's wrong, Son?"
"Nothing … nothing at all," Gaylord had replied and ran to his room.
He had read the hurt expression in his father's face. Had longed to throw his arms around the broad shoulders and pour his heart out. But how could he? How could he explain a smaller boy had caused him to cry?
If the situation had been different, if the boy had been larger than himself, perhaps he could have told the whole story. But this was just another incident he must keep locked within himself. This he could not even tell to his mother.
Gaylord had cultivated his own group of friends and most of them enjoyed coming to his house. Dancing and eating the delicious things his mother always served was a real treat. They all liked his parents. His mother, a favorite with the boys, was so pretty. And his father, after the living room rug had been rolled up, was the most popular male in the room with both sexes. Gaylord wasn't unpopular. He was a good dancer and many times his passions had been aroused by the softness of the girl snuggled so close. He had no desire for sex with them but he had kissed and necked with them. There was that one time … but the girl had been the aggressor, and because he wanted to be like the rest, who he was sure did those things, he had allowed the act to be fulfilled.
Lately the living room had been dark, and the rug hadn't been rolled up for dancing for some time. After that experience with Thelma White he didn't care for dancing or girls at all.
The auditorium corner was warm, and as the tumult continued he felt its excitement stir timidly through his body. The lights had been dimmed and a million stars shot from a circular mirrored ball that revolved, spinning a fairy-like transformation over the crude walls and patched ceiling.
He no longer regretted the impulse that had brought him to the dance. The moving stars awoke memories of a thousand nights. He was a girl and dancing with Blake. The darkness felt clean and in Blake's strong arms he had a feeling of security. In them he could forget the crowd and still be a part of it. From the frightening terror that had descended upon him that first day of school, from the cruel remarks about his person, from the blows he had received, he had always crawled away within himself. But now, as he imagined himself in Blake's bronze arms, a feeling of being wanted had entered. The shyness had left. Ahead lay a bright future, a transcendental answer to all his suffering.
He sat on the wooden bench, lost in thought, not feeling its hardness; his soul filled with the dream that had come so often lately, and the mirrored stars swept silently across his child-like face. He closed his eyes and in the dream Blake took his hand and drew him close. He remembered the grin, how cute it was, how genuine. He made a wide circle of all those he knew and decided again that Blake was the only one. The pleasure, the sheer physical delight of their bodies touching, grew within him to such an extent that he wanted to stay in their protection forever; against this, like a warning knock, came the feeling of danger, a threatening danger lurking in fiendish eyes. Eyes that did not understand. As if the bronze arms had suddenly been taken from him and desiring to get them back, he flinched his eyes, a response to the sensation of peril. It was like a struggle against sleep, or the beginning of something terrible.
"Come on, beautiful … whataya sitting here all by your lonesome little self for? Let's dance, cutie."
The words were coarse and drawn together. They smelt of whiskey and the warm fresh air was suddenly contaminated with filth and germs. It surrounded him closer and closer until it choked him. And his beautiful dream was replaced by a dreadful anticipation.