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| Part 1 by Castgimp |
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| It was 1956, the summer after my junior year in high school. It was myfirst summer in Ohio. My father had taken a job teaching in the Englishdepartment at Oberlin College the previous fall. We had moved fromBloomington, where my father had finished graduate school and stayed on asan instructor at the University of Indiana. Now he was an assistantprofessor at Oberlin. The small town we moved to in Ohio was called Elyria.It was about 20 minutes east of the campus. The thing my father liked aboutElyria was that the writer Sherwood Anderson had been born there. Before wemoved he would tell his friends in the English department at Indiana that hewas moving his family to Winesburg, Ohio, and they would all chuckle. Itwasn't until I was in college myself several years later, sitting through asurvey course in American literature, that I finally understood thereference. To me at the time Elyria was just a small town in the middle of nowhere.Bloomington felt like a big city by comparison. Elyria was farm country.Corn and Holstein cows. I was a city slicker compared with the kids I foundmyself in school with. Bloomington wasn't New York City, but it sure wasbigger than Elyria. That summer I took a job working the late afternoon shift behind the sodafountain at Hess' drug store. My weekday mornings were free. I was workingjust four hours a day, two o'clock to six o'clock, Monday through Thursday,six hours on Fridays when old man Hess stayed open till eight, and all dayon Saturday. I didn't mind working. It kept me busy. Most of the guys Iwent to school with were working too. Tom was milking for his Dad. Joeywas pumping gas at old man Hess's gas station. Ben was working at Sweet'sroadside produce stand, picking in the morning and working the counter inthe afternoon, when it was too hot to pick. Joey was my best friend. Or at least he had been. He was a year older thanthe rest of us because he'd stayed back a year in junior high school. Joeywas kind of a loner, kind of moody and dark. He'd had a tough time.Everybody said so. He lived alone with his mother. His father had diedwhen he was just little, when the oil delivery truck he was driving turnedover going around a bend in the hollow. Now Mrs. Mayfield worked fittingscrews into steel in the old sheet metal press down by the river. Sheearned a union wage for a job mostly done by men. And Joey worked yearround for old man Hess pumping gas. Joey and I, it seemed like we bonded early on. He didn't have a lot ofother friends competing for his time, and I was powerful lonely for afriend. We both loved baseball-he played and I watched. He was somethingof a baseball star in that part of Ohio. Everybody said he had a shot atthe minor leagues after high school. Even with his athletic success hescorned most of the popular kids at school. He didn't have the patience, orthe time and money, to run with that crowd. That suited me fine. He and I-we both followed professional baseball with a passion. That didn't set usapart, but it did give us something to talk about right off. I moved toOhio the end of that fabled summer of 1955. I was the new kid in schooljust as the storied Dodgers-Yankees series was heating up. And we bothsmoked-we were the bad boys. That's what first threw us together-baseball and cigarettes. We were bothDodgers fans, and we both stood out back of the high school at lunchtimesmoking. All through the winter we spent most of our free time together,when he wasn't working, which wasn't all that much time really. Then in thespring we had our falling out, and we stopped spending time together, justlike that. I hadn't seen him much at all since school let out. He was playing ball in a summer league, but I hadn't been up to see himplay. Sometimes I'd pass by the gas station in the car with my dad or momand I'd see him working there. And every time a dark wave of regret andshame and desire would wash over me and I'd be flooded with the images ofthat Sunday afternoon in April. And just as fast as I'd be fighting toblock those images back out. It took me a while to compose myself afterwe'd driven by Hess' filling station, though as the summer wore on I wasgetting better at stuffing those feelings and images back down inside beforethey got very far out. During the summer we ate dinner very late by Ohio standards. I worked untilsix and my father was teaching a late summer seminar and it was sometimes7:30 before we sat down together. Dad was running especially late on thisparticular evening, and my mom and I were fixing to sit down and startwithout him when he breezed in through the screen door, breathless andsweaty in the summer evening heat. "Sorry I'm late. The dean cornered me on the way out. Smells good inhere." It was just another summer night in the Scoffield house. At leastit was until he dropped the bomb that exploded my adolescence. He dumpedhis bags in the entranceway and hung up his tweed teaching jacket and washedhis face with cold water at the kitchen sink. "I just came by the Hessstation on my way home from work. Stopped for some gas. I was practicallyon empty. Quite a crowd standing around the pumps. I guess Joey Mayfieldjust broke his ankle, playing baseball, not more than an hour ago. He'sdown at the hospital now." My heart was racing. "Joey? Joey broke his ankle?" "That's what they're saying. Stealing second base. Bob Young said he wassliding and caught his foot on the bag. Turned it right over and the nextthing he knew Joey was howling and holding his ankle. I guess they had tocarry him off the field. Bob said it looked like it was busted pretty good.I guess that will take him out of league play for the rest of the summer.Too bad. He's got quite an arm." My head was spinning. I thought I might be sick. We were sitting at thetable by this time. The smell of my mother's macaroni salad filled mynostrils-a smell I will forever associate with Joey and his broken ankle. "Honey are you OK?" It was my mother. "You look pale dear." "I'm going . . . I'm just . . .I'm not hungry. May I be excused?" "Poor dear . . . are you sick? It must be the heat. And it's so late.It's not right, waiting this long to eat on a hot night like this. Havesome cold tea." "No really, I . . . just want to lie down. I'll be fine." I pushed myselfup from the table and drifted in a fog back to my bedroom where the last ofthe dusky evening light was just visible through the window over my desk. From my room I could hear my mother's hissing remonstrance to my father."John look how you've upset him! You know how funny he is about Joey. Idon't know what happened between those two boys. They used to be bestfriends and now they don't even speak. I don't trust that Joey as far as Ican spit. Never did like him. I can't say how but he hurt my boy. I can'teven drive by the gas station with Pete in the car without him taking illlike that, and you waltz in here announcing Joey has a broken ankle as ifyou were telling us it looked like it might rain. You have no sensesometimes John." "Mary Anne he's a grown boy! Next year he'll leave for college. We can'ttiptoe around here forever worrying about whether we'll upset him. You'llmake him a sissy yet. He has to toughen up. It's not like I announced thatJoey was dead. That Joey-he's a tough one. He'll be back on the baseballfield and pitching as well as ever in no time. You mark my words. Thisbroken ankle won't set him back but a few months." I fell forward onto my narrow twin bed and pulled the pillow over my head todrown out their voices. I couldn't get Joey out of my mind. Joey with abroken ankle. Joey on the pitching mound. Joey with those strong shouldersand big hands. Joey with his dark hair falling over his eyes. Joey withthe stub of a cigarette hanging on his lips. Joey running like the wind forhome plate. Joey rolling back his head and spreading his legs as I take hishard cock in my mouth. I try to block the images out, to keep them fromcoming, but they keep flooding my mind, one after another. I push the palmsof my hands against my eyes forcing myself to see stars, and still Joey'simage bleeds through. Joey caressing my head and pushing his cock deeperinto my mouth and throat. Joey grinding his hips up into my face. Joeyspitting at me and yelling "get the fuck out of my house you filthycock-sucker!" The shame floods over me again, flaming my face crimson against the pillow.And now he's laid up with a broken ankle. I try to picture him on crutches,his ankle in a cast, and I find myself getting hard. I know now I'll haveto go see him, have to speak to him. I know that his broken ankle compelsme to confront him again. I know I cannot ignore the fire inside of meanymore. I consider sneaking out of the house after my parents are in bed,knocking on his window the way I used to. I convince myself that would be amistake. I know I won't sleep, but I know I need to wait until morning.All night I lie awake staring at the ceiling holding my hard dick with myright hand-not stroking it-not jacking myself off-just holding it, andthinking about Joey. |
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