Return to Oakpin(59)

            “Just a block or two,” Wade said. Larry pulled up, and they fell in step. “What did Barnes say?”

            “Barnes is on,” Larry said. They’d already been over this. He’d asked Stephanie Barnes to the homecoming dance, which was a week from Saturday, and they were doubling with Wade and Wendy. Wade was going to drive. They were going to dinner afterward at the Tropical, the only Hawaiian Chinese restaurant in the county.

            “She’s cool,” Wade said. “She’s going to UCLA.” Wade had said this before also, and the chatter and the walking made Larry impatient. He skipped sideways.

            “Let’s go,” he said.

            “You still taking guitar with the fag?”

            Larry stopped, and Wade walked by him on the dark street.

            “What?” Wade said. He was ten steps ahead. “Are you? You must be getting pretty good.”

            Larry stood still in the center of the pavement.

            Wade stopped and turned around, threw his arms out. “Come on,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. The guy’s a fag, right?”

            Larry was amazed that Wade had turned out to be an idiot. He’d known him all these years, every year, and now within two weeks Wade shook out as an absolute dunce. Larry looked at his old friend, his silhouette on the dark street. He breathed in and out; he was impatient to run again.

            “Let’s go,” Larry said, drifting into a jog. “Let’s get some good out of this.”

            “Hey, wait,” Wade said. “I’m going to stop by at Wendy’s for a while—come with.”

            Larry was now twenty yards beyond his friend, and he loped back and stood before him. “You go ahead,” he said.

            These were crazy days, he thought. He wondered consciously what he was going to say next. A few days before, he would have just run home, and now he was up for some kind of confrontation. Everybody was shaking out, it seemed, even him. Who would he be?

            He smiled. “Wade.” He touched Wade on the shoulder. “I’m going to give you one more chance, okay? About Jimmy Brand. Don’t call him a fag. It makes you look stupid. Are you stupid?” Larry heard himself say this, and he didn’t shrug or duck or laugh. He’d said it, and he’d meant it. He was surprised but happy with that. He was likely to say anything.

            “Wendy said he was a fag.”

            “No, she didn’t. She didn’t say that.”

            “She goes to see him,” Wade says. “It’s sick.”

            “Let’s run.”

            “‘One more chance’?” Wade said. “What does that mean?”

            “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Larry said. “Tell Wendy hi for me.” And now he turned and filled his lungs with air and plunged away, starting fast and staying there, striding powerfully down the street, each step a flight, faster than he’d ever taken such a distance. As the motion adjusted itself and he settled into the pattern, pushing and reaching, pushing and reaching, he knew that his heart was good for all of it. There wasn’t enough road for this heart. There was no way he would slow down before he flew into the park.

            “Wendy,” he said as he ran and again, “Wendy, watch out, my dear, for stupid Wade approaches.” Oh god, he thought, and he heard the words as they came from his mouth, “Who am I now? Who am I now?”

            • • •

            Painting the Kirby house went very well. Frank Gunderson came by and joined Mason and Craig for the job. The three men did prep for two days, taping and sanding, and then they struck the entire interior with an airless sprayer in one long day, working with two lamps as the fall twilight fell and doubled. “I’m a get-it-done painter,” Frank told them as they masked the light fixtures and doorframes. “We paint the men’s room five times a year at the Antlers. I’m not really into your fine work.”