VERYONE IN KNOCKEMSTIFF, OHIO, THOUGHT THAT DUANE Myers was going out with his first real woman that night, but he was just blowing smoke. He’d spread the rumor all over the holler, then covered the major details at the Torch Drive-in: smeared a glob of ketchup across the backseat of his father’s Chrysler, spilled some wine on a pair of his sister’s ragged panties, even branded two hickeys on his neck with a metal spoon that he heated up with a Zippo lighter. Then he spent the rest of the evening hunkered down behind the steering wheel like a toad, waiting to go home. He drank a six-pack of warm beer and watched
Women in Cages
and
Female Moonshiners
. The odor of scorched flesh lingered in the car like the smell of buttered popcorn.
Ever since Duane had turned sixteen that spring, his old man, Clarence, had been on his ass about finding a girlfriend. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” the old man asked. “Goddamn, Duane, when I was your age, I was bustin’ cherries all over this damn county.” They were setting tomato plants out in the long, rocky garden that Clarence made the boy slave over every summer. The old man sucked down a beer for every three Big Boys that Duane stuck in the ground. Empty cans were scattered along the crooked rows like giant seedpods. “I shit you not, boy,” Clarence bragged, settling back on his skinny haunches and wiping sweat from his dirt-streaked brow, “one time I fucked a mud dauber’s nest I was so goddamn horny.” Duane kept moving forward silently on his knees, raking up lumpy clay mounds around each wilted plant with his hands. Clarence had been telling these stories forever; one day it was a bee’s nest, then a sweaty sock, sometimes a pint of pig brains. It had always been a big joke, but things were different now.
By the middle of the summer, Clarence seemed to be on the verge of cracking up. He paced around the pasture behind the house sometimes for hours, stomping through cow shit and seriously wondering if maybe his only son might be God’s punishment for a life that had been so littered with lust. At night he had nightmares that Duane was turning into a sissy like that Dixon boy from over on Plug Run, the one that got nabbed wearing his mother’s nightgown, then moved to Columbus for a Swedish operation.
“You gotta quit readin’ them books,” Clarence warned Duane one morning at the kitchen table. He looked like hell, anyone could tell he’d had another fucked-up dream. “Start watchin’ more TV,” he advised. The old man took a sip of hot coffee, pushed away the plate of white bread and bologna gravy his sleepy wife had set in front of him.
Duane leaned against the door, gulping a glass of cold milk. His stomach had been on fire for weeks now. Trying to avoid his father’s baggy, bloodshot eyes, he kept glancing nervously around the room until he finally caught his wavy reflection in a shiny copper skillet that hung on the wall. He stared at the purple craters sunk into his thin face, the black-framed glasses, the short choppy haircut that Clarence still insisted on. “Check out that Twiggy girl,” he heard his father say. “By God, I’d take a piece of that.”
The problem with Duane became the old man’s favorite topic. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Even the bastards that Clarence worked with at the paper mill got in on the act. Every day they waited until Clarence walked into the lunchroom, then started blowing off about finding dried jizz sparkling like doughnut glaze in the backseat of their junior’s muscle car, used rubbers lying in the driveway like fat dead slugs. They kept feeding the old man new insults to throw at Duane: faggot, poofer, fudgepacker. It was like tossing logs on a fire. Clarence would come home wound tight as a clock, stomp through the kitchen door waving his sweaty, sawdust-covered arms, screaming “Pansy!” at the top of his lungs.
Duane’s friends only made things worse. Just a couple of weeks after
Women in Cages
and
Female Moonshiners
. The odor of scorched flesh lingered in the car like the smell of buttered popcorn.
Ever since Duane had turned sixteen that spring, his old man, Clarence, had been on his ass about finding a girlfriend. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” the old man asked. “Goddamn, Duane, when I was your age, I was bustin’ cherries all over this damn county.” They were setting tomato plants out in the long, rocky garden that Clarence made the boy slave over every summer. The old man sucked down a beer for every three Big Boys that Duane stuck in the ground. Empty cans were scattered along the crooked rows like giant seedpods. “I shit you not, boy,” Clarence bragged, settling back on his skinny haunches and wiping sweat from his dirt-streaked brow, “one time I fucked a mud dauber’s nest I was so goddamn horny.” Duane kept moving forward silently on his knees, raking up lumpy clay mounds around each wilted plant with his hands. Clarence had been telling these stories forever; one day it was a bee’s nest, then a sweaty sock, sometimes a pint of pig brains. It had always been a big joke, but things were different now.
By the middle of the summer, Clarence seemed to be on the verge of cracking up. He paced around the pasture behind the house sometimes for hours, stomping through cow shit and seriously wondering if maybe his only son might be God’s punishment for a life that had been so littered with lust. At night he had nightmares that Duane was turning into a sissy like that Dixon boy from over on Plug Run, the one that got nabbed wearing his mother’s nightgown, then moved to Columbus for a Swedish operation.
“You gotta quit readin’ them books,” Clarence warned Duane one morning at the kitchen table. He looked like hell, anyone could tell he’d had another fucked-up dream. “Start watchin’ more TV,” he advised. The old man took a sip of hot coffee, pushed away the plate of white bread and bologna gravy his sleepy wife had set in front of him.
Duane leaned against the door, gulping a glass of cold milk. His stomach had been on fire for weeks now. Trying to avoid his father’s baggy, bloodshot eyes, he kept glancing nervously around the room until he finally caught his wavy reflection in a shiny copper skillet that hung on the wall. He stared at the purple craters sunk into his thin face, the black-framed glasses, the short choppy haircut that Clarence still insisted on. “Check out that Twiggy girl,” he heard his father say. “By God, I’d take a piece of that.”
The problem with Duane became the old man’s favorite topic. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Even the bastards that Clarence worked with at the paper mill got in on the act. Every day they waited until Clarence walked into the lunchroom, then started blowing off about finding dried jizz sparkling like doughnut glaze in the backseat of their junior’s muscle car, used rubbers lying in the driveway like fat dead slugs. They kept feeding the old man new insults to throw at Duane: faggot, poofer, fudgepacker. It was like tossing logs on a fire. Clarence would come home wound tight as a clock, stomp through the kitchen door waving his sweaty, sawdust-covered arms, screaming “Pansy!” at the top of his lungs.
Duane’s friends only made things worse. Just a couple of weeks after
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