0024 Chapter Twenty Four

We piled in the car and my mind took me back to a late summer back home: I could feel the ridges and swirls of his fingertips slowly dragging along the shape of my face. I had no ridges and swirls there to give him in return. I couldn’t look at him as I sat there. This was his time, his moment, his vision, my gift to him. Time stopped of course. My mind rushed at first, thinking, get away, get away, but his touch was pure.

Let me explain. I’d gone into town with my mom for a Saturday shopping trip. We did this once a month or so. Sometimes Jenny would go, sometimes not. Dad never went. It was moms day. She had a list and a plan of attack. She needed it. She needed the sights and sounds. She needed to get out of the house and feel the outside world.
The cars parked at an angle along the store fronts. The windows displayed the latest fashions. The prosperity of shopping. The power imparted there. You had money and you had choices. You had a list. You might even have impulse money.

We’d hit the Main Street stores first. There we’d find towels, bed sheets, vacuum cleaner bags, soap, and all the other things that kept us clean, dry, and horizontal. Clothes were always a struggle. Mom didn’t understand the need for a certain brand of shirt or sneakers. “Why, honey?” she’d ask. “It’s the same shoe!”

My feet grew at an incredible rate. Like the time-lapse film with the seasick music they showed in science class of a seed growing into a plant. My big toes worked their way through the canvas of a new pair of sneakers within weeks. I’d do my best to conceal my shame, but once noticed, my abnormal growth became an obsession for her.

Socks became victims of my toenails. My shirts gained a yellow ring around the neck. My jeans shrunk as soon as they hit hot water. My clothes abandoned me before I got to know them. “He’s eating us out of house and home, and I just can’t keep him in shoes anymore!” I heard her say to a friend on the phone one day. Sometimes I felt like a monster.

I dreamt that I’d gone to sleep one night and woke up to find that my legs had grown so much they’d crashed through the wall of my bedroom and crushed my sister like a bug. When she realized that I’d killed my sister with my disgusting growth, my mom looked at me in disgust, still in bed with my legs pushed through the wall, and said, “You see? You see what happens when you don’t listen? That’s just wrong, James!”

Mom would go through my dresser and closet and hold shirts and pants up in front of me only to shake her head in despair. Then she’d claw through my underwear and socks, throwing the torn, the threadbare, the stretched to its limit, aside.

The worst part was donating all my outgrown clothes to the church on the way to town. I’d have to carry the cardboard box full of my shame inside. “And these are from James,” Mom announced to the church lady with a smile. The church lady smiled her churchly smile back at us, and I’d have to stand there while they examined the contents of the box and discussed the potential blessing that each sock and shirt would bring to a needy parishoner.

“My, he is growing, isn’t he!” The church lady remarked as she looked me up and down. “Weren’t you here just a few weeks ago?”

“You have no idea!” Mom groaned. “I just can’t keep him in underwear anymore!” They both stopped and looked at me inquisitively and I pictured myself standing there as some dirty Biblical animal with balls the size of those globes we used to learn geography in school. Red, dripping horns growing out of my scalp, and a penis that hung down to the floor like an elephants trunk completed my nightmare. The whole world knew I’d become a dirty little masturbator. They could tell by my hairy palms. I couldn’t see any hair there, but they could.

Next was Markly’s Mercantile. Markly’s carried “Clothes for the whole family.” It was real torture for me. Yes, I wanted new clothes, but for the price demanded from me to get them, I’d have surely retreated to the woods along the river to live naked until I froze to death.

Markly’s didn’t have a dressing room for kids. Markly’s had a corner behind a rack of shirts or jeans where kids would go and try on clothes. Socks were easy, the package showed a graph. Shirts were easy too, as were coats and shoes for that matter.

Jeans and underwear were a different story. Underwear required a discussion. “James, are you still feeling OK in briefs?” Mom would ask. “I hear some of the older teens are wearing boxers these days. That’s kind of far out, isn’t it?”

About then a sales lady would wander over and offer to help. I’d stand there having a heart attack as they discussed the roominess benefits of briefs versus boxers. The noise in my head blocked most of what they said, but I’d always catch a comment like, “Well, I certainly do want grandchildren someday!” And I’d melt into a world of tiny things.

Jeans required a try on. If I’d have had six NASA scientists and engineers, with calculators, slide rules, and laser beams with me, assuring my mom that a particular pair of Levi’s were the perfect fit, she would not have been convinced until I’d snuck behind the rack in the corner and tried them on. Anyone could be found behind that rack going through the same trial I was. Some red-headed kid would be sitting there fumbling with the buttons of a shirt or pair of pants looking exhausted, while a mother waited impatiently on the other side.

Once the new jeans were on and buttoned, the “pull test” began. I’d wander beyond the safety of the rack, and she’d drop to her knees and pull down on the legs, her head bumping into my thighs. Then it was the “turn around,” and she’d grab the material just below my ass and twist this way and that. The final humiliation was the hand down the front. She’d lift up my shirt and shove her hand down the front of the jeans and pull. “I don’t know,” she’d say. “You know as soon as we get home you’ll fill these right out!”

I went through this twice a year. I’d do it because Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I’d do it because my penis, my body, and my mind were unforgivable sins and I needed to be punished.  I’d do it because Markly’s was where that kind of thing was done. I’d do it because I was a kid and couldn’t not do it. That red-headed kid sitting behind the rack in his underwear sucking on a Black Cow was lucky. His mother had forgotten him while on the other side of the store. He had a sister young enough to be dragged along. He got a break now and then.

On that particular day, after she’d finished torturing me, I’d been allowed to wander alone as she went to another store to look for household goods. “Meet me at the car in an hour,” she’d said. She’d be gone at least two hours.

I bought a grape Nehi and spotted a bench on the sidewalk. An old man sat on one end and I sat in the hot sun on the other. There was a small, green, toy gun embedded in the sidewalk in front of the bench. It looked like it was one of those wax guns kids would buy and chew on. Maybe being green it tasted like apple. People had walked over it a few times. It had the zig zag lines of sneakers engraved in it. It had been dropped and forgotten behind tears and the pull of a mothers hand in a hurry and had begun melting into the hot summer sidewalk.

“Fine day, isn’t it?” the old man asked, breaking me from my thoughts.

“Yes sir, real fine,” I answered. We sat in silence.

“Not too many more of these,” he said.

“Yes sir, fall is coming.”

“yes it is,” he said. “Lovely,” he added.

“Yes sir,” I answered.

“I’m Mr. Harleson. What’s your name?”

“I’m James.”

“Nice to meet you, James.”

“Yes sir, nice to meet you too,” I answered, as I took another gulp of grape goodness.

“What flavor?” Mr. Harleson asked.

“Huh? Oh, grape, sir.”

“Wonderful!” he said.

Mr. Harleson laughed his quiet laugh as a boy ran by pulling his sister in a wagon. “Slow down, Billy, or I’m telling!” she protested. I looked at the gun, they’d somehow missed it.

“How old are you, James?” Mr. Harleson asked.

“Uh, I’m twelve… uh, twelve and a half, sir.”

“Oh I see, wonderful!”

“Yes, sir.”

A little girl about eight years old came skipping down the sidewalk and stopped in front of the bench. “Hi, Mr. Harleson!” she said.

“Well, hello,” he answered, “is that Katy?”

“Yes, Mr. Harleson, it’s Katy!” she giggled.

“Wonderful!” he said.

“Do you want to say hi to me?” she asked.

“Fine, fine!” he answered. She moved and stood in front of Mr. Harleson, and he lifted his hands and drew his fingers across her face.

It was only then that I noticed his white cane and dark glasses. His hands floated softly across Katy’s face touching down now and then to reveal her shape. She smiled her small town smile and shook with her giggles. “You’re growing up just fine, aren’t you, Katy?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Harleson, I sure am!” she answered.

She looked at me and asked him, “Have you said hi to him, Mr. Harleson?”

“Well, well no,” he answered.

“Do you want him to?” she asked, looking at me with Saturday expectations.

“Uh, uh I don’t…” I tried.

“Oh let him,” she insisted, “it kind of tickles!”

I sat in the back of that big Cadillac. Joe had collected the money. Squeegy was lying with his feet on my lap again. His eyes were closed as we stood still and the earth moved beneath us. I was tired. That first breath of fresh air as we walked out the door of that apartment had been beautiful. The world passed by and I remembered that day just before school began again and the ridges and swirls of Mr. Harleson’s fingertips as they glided along my face in the hot sun while Katy giggled.