The Spring of Discontent

Butch Parker and Arm spent the following week in Miss Raupp’s detention hall.  While Arm sat cheerfully at a desk in his army jacket, tapping a pencil on his notebook and trying to make small talk with Miss Raupp, Butch sat hunched over an English book, feeling like a prisoner and dreaming of Rene walking free on the outside, shed forever of her cheerleading duties, one season closer to womanhood, one season closer to business skirts and serious shoes, pinned-back hair and long nails.  Chevyhead was getting a piece of that action—the growing up, the wonderful assumption of responsibility.  Chevyhead, the man of the sports page and pep assemblies, the man of the cave, a college prospect, now had the wide-open free shot at Rene, while Butch Parker did time in the dungeon of truants, of all places, a criminal, of all things, suddenly miles from the inside and the folders of the future, the folders with their covers showing college edifices and couples studying together on the green, green grass, miles from the pamphlets of academia, brochures of curricula and forms of entry, in the hands of Chevyhead and Rene, the proud and smiling couple, white teeth and new tennis shoes on the green, green grass of the college.

Butch’s eyes moved across the sentences of the book in front of him.  The black of the letters and the white spaces between flickered like a railroad track as seen from the window of a moving train—the roofs of the Ts and the frames of the As, the foundations of the Ms and the stories of the Ss, the intricacies of the little ks and the friendliness of the little rs, the disparities between the big Es and the little es, the big Gs and the little gs, the tradition of the big Js and the beauty of the Os, big or little—all flashing by, curving up and curving down, turning jagged, then smoothing out, trailing off, disappearing, then reappearing and packing tightly together while Butch’s brain lost feeling and his face began to prickle.  His eyes churned along on auto-pilot, driving across the pages, driving back and forth across the same roads of words, the same blocks of images and neighborhoods of thought, the same counties of ideas, again and again, while Arm’s pencil tapped and his knees bounced on, and Miss Raupp sat behind her desk grading homework papers in her white nylon blouse, occasionally sipping from her ceramic coffee mug and responding to Arm in low tones, her lipstick and the whites of her eyes pronounced.

And the clock barely ticked on, the big hand laboring through the minutes, hanging up on each dash, sticking there, then clicking halfway to the next, causing Butch’s heart to jump, pound harder.  And Butch felt the soles of the shoes tramping in the hallways above him, the track and baseball people going about their routines.  He felt the ripe winds of March puffing on his face, smelled the leather of his Fairlane’s interior, the faint fumes of beer and cigarettes.  He felt the lacquered bone of his steering wheel and the winds slipping in through the partly opened window, down his forearms and cotton shirt.

“Hey, Miss Raupp,” Arm said, “Butch, there, he still needs a date for the prom.  Can you believe it?”

“Do not,” Butch said.

“So he was just wondering ... ”

“Arm,” Miss Raupp said, her voice steady and soft, sweet and high-pitched.

“His old girl dumped him.”  Arm grinned as though Butch got the joke.  “Bummer, Miss Raupp, don’t you think?”

“Arm.”

“Do you think you’re too old, Miss Raupp?” Arm said.

“Arm,” Butch said.

“No, for what?” Miss Raupp said.

“I don’t know,” Arm said.  “Like, if you wanted to be in a rock band, say, would you be too old?”

“Not particularly,” Miss Raupp said.

“Okay,” Arm said, nodding his head so violently that his entire torso surged forward and backward, “okay.  I like it.”  He continued to nod, looking at Butch, his eyebrows deeply furrowed.  “So what you’re saying, then ... ”

“Arm, I’m saying, do your work.”

“I’m done.”

“May I see it?”

Arm worked his way out of the desk, pulling his big self of imitation army rags to a standing position.  He lifted his open notebook by a corner, pinching it between a thumb and index finger, as though it were contaminated or sterilized or some kind of ancient archeological artifact, and carried it dangling to Miss Raupp.  He stood in front of her desk, looking down at her, dangling the notebook in front of her face.

“Well,” Miss Raupp said, “show me.”

Arm turned and grinned at Butch, popped his eyebrows up and down a couple of times, then turned back to Miss Raupp.

“Here,” he said, “I’m all done.”  Miss Raupp took the tattered notebook from him.  Arm held out his arms.  “Behold, my creation.”

“For what?”

“Check it out.”  Arm again turned to pop his eyebrows at Butch.  Resting her head on the heel of a palm, Miss Raupp examined Arm’s work.  “Huh?” Arm said.  “Huh?  Huh?”  He jerked his shoulders up and down, holding his arms out to the sides, palms up, as though he were blessing something.  The baggy folds of his army jacket made his arms look three times their normal size.  “Huh?  Huh?”  Miss Raupp rumpled her brow, saying nothing.  “Pretty good, ain’t it?  Not bad, huh?”

“Frankly, Arm.”  Miss Raupp sighed.  “I can’t really make anything out.”

“What?”  Arm leaned over and pulled the top end of the notebook toward him.  He and Miss Raupp engaged in a mild tug-of-war.  Arm pulled the notebook free, placed it against his chest and pointed at the open page.  He stood tall at the front of Miss Raupp’s desk, his back to Butch, puffed elbows poking out from his sides, as he explained the meaning.  “Here,” he said, looking down to verify his place on the page, “what’s this?”

Miss Raupp shrugged.

“Some type of vehicle?” she said.

“Very good, but what kind of vehicle?”

“I don’t know, a tractor?”

“Close, but very good,” Arm said.  “Close.”

Butch began to chuckle from deep within, little warm bursts of silent laughter that made him feel good.

Arm tapped the page.

“Now, what does it say right here?”

Miss Raupp leaned over farther, exposing a full two inches of smoky-white cleavage that stunned Butch.  Arm turned to Butch and flicked his eyebrows up and down.  Miss Raupp shrugged and shook her head.

“I think we better sit down,” she said.

“Now, wait a minute,” Arm said.  “You asked to see, and I’m showing you.  This says computer—com-pu-ter, get it?”

“That says, ‘c-u-m-p-e-w-t-u-r,’ not computer.”

Arm jerked his head forward in disbelief, flipped the notebook around and inspected the page.

“No it doesn’t,” he giggled.

“Why don’t we sit down and continue working?  We’ve still got ten minutes.”

“I don’t believe it,” Arm said.  “Don’t you get it?  See, right here ... ”

“Better sit down before I write you up for wasting the whole hour.”

“What’re you talking about?  Here, here.”  Arm pounded a finger into the page, wrinkling it worse.  “It says right here ... ”  He ran his finger unsteadily along the words.  “Hook up to dashboard functions.”

“That doesn’t look like functions.”

“And see this?”

“And now that you mention it, that’s a long way from dashboard.”

“It’s a screen, get it?” Arm said.  “A screen.  And what do you think it’s for?”

Arm stomped his army boots.

Miss Raupp, her forearms flat on the desk, elbows out, the palm of one hand lying flat on the other forearm, looked blankly up at Arm.  Through one twitching eye, Butch looked hard for another sign of cleavage.

“It ain’t for watching soap operas,” Arm said.  “You mean you can’t figure it out?  See?  It’s a computer, a com-pu-ter, Miss Raupp.  And this is a tractor.”

“That’s what I said it was,” Miss Raupp said.  “I said it was a tractor.”

“Yes, and I said you were close, didn’t I?  Didn’t I say you were close?  But it ain’t your average tractor, Miss Raupp.  It’s computerized, a computerized tractor.”

Arm turned to flash another grin at Butch, popping his eyebrows up and down.

“That’s very nice.  You better sit down now.”

“So you like my idea, Miss Raupp?”

“What’s not to like?”

“Think I can make money off of it?  Think I can get the patent?  Hey, how do you go about getting a patent, Miss Raupp?  Where do I write?  Who do I pay?”

“I don’t know.  Why don’t you ask the librarian?”

“Hey,” Arm said, lifting a finger over his head, “Miss Raupp.  What an excellent idea.  How come I didn’t think of that?  Golly whiz, I think that’s what I’m gonna do, then.  Thank you, and Miss Raupp?”

“Yes?”

“Would you like a cut on the profits?”

Miss Raupp smiled.

“That’s all right, Arm.  It’s your idea.  I haven’t done anything.”

“But you have, Miss Raupp.  You’ve sat right here in this dungeon, presiding over your poor and your refuse, your cold and your lost, your less fortunate and more wasted, and you’ve given them hope and ... ”

“All right, Arm, that’s good.”

Arm turned to Butch.

“Am I right, Butch?  Don’t I know it?”

Butch shrugged.

“I guess so.”

“You wait, Miss Raupp.  You just wait.  This thing’s gonna take off.  You watch.  Call it revenge on the government.  Everybody’s gonna want Arm’s Computerized Tractors, even people that don’t got farms.  Hell, maybe they’ll buy their kid one to pick up his dates in.”

“If anybody can pull it off,” Miss Raupp said, “I’m sure you can.”

“Hey, hey,” Arm said, “give me five.”  He held out a palm for Miss Raupp to slap.  She tapped it lightly.  Arm looked up at the clock.  “It’s almost time to go, Miss Raupp.  So’ve we been good?  Are you going to give Mr. Blanke a good report?  We’ve been pretty good, haven’t we?  You gotta admit.  I’ve been doin my work and everything, right?”

“All right, you guys can go,” Miss Raupp said.

With that, Arm quit talking, slapped his notebook shut, pivoted, flapped his elbows upward like a chicken’s wings and jogged back to his desk for the rest of his belongings, his big boots slipping and clomping and sliding on the tiles, like the boots of a cartoon.

“So what’d you think?” Arm said to Butch as they tossed their books in their lockers and headed for the front doors.

“What, about the tractor?”

“No,” Arm said, “the cleavage.”

“Oh, that,” Butch said, feigning nonchalance.  “I thought there was some there.”

“You thought?  No kidding.  Boy, did I have the angle or what?” Arm said, attempting to recreate the cleavage with his hands.  “Miss Raupp sure got the blomms, don’t she?”

Arm flashed a grin at Butch, his teeth locked together.

And the winds of March blew a little more hollowly, a little more warmly every day outside Butch’s bedroom window, through his driver’s side window and into his face, signaling the arrival of April, when the neighborhood streets grew whiter, the cement grainier, and the fields and lawns of Smoky River grew greener, sprouting daisies and dandelions and daffodils, and with each breeze came the smell of their cologne.

Butch wore short sleeves and a windbreaker, left his hair wet when he stepped out the front door after showers, smoked piles of dope with Arm, drank oodles of jumbos, watched game shows after school, laughing out loud at the littlest things.

“What’s so funny?” his mother would say while wiping a bowl, or dusting under an ashtray, or closing a cupboard, or slicing banana bread, or stacking envelopes in little piles.

“Oh, nothing,” Butch would say.  “Just this one guy, what he said.”

But sometimes Butch could not remember what it was he had been laughing at; he just knew that he had been laughing.  For all he knew, he could have been staring at a blank screen; in fact, some days, some game shows, that was what it was like—staring at a blank screen, but never with the knowledge that doing so was anything less than fine, all right, no problem; after all, if Butch temporarily shut off the chorus going on in his head, the refrain repeating itself again and again, a few lines from a verse of a song running over and over through his head—if he managed to shut that down, and stop shaking his knees up and down, and pull his imaginary fingers from the tangles of white-blonde hair, his lips from the surface of the honey-dew melon skin; if he managed to do all that, and to stop his heart from buzzing, his breath from bottlenecking in his chest, his thoughts from roiling, swirling facelessly on, he would notice an actual head on the TV screen, a living human head, a pair of shoulders, a sport coat and tie, perhaps a corsage, a glimmering smile or two, shiny shoes, and it would startle him.  He might notice these things, not to mention the sound of a studio audience clapping, sighing in synchronization, or exploding with tinny laughter, a woman his mother’s age hopping up and down behind a podium, a young man smiling like the jaws of a steel vice, his teeth white and all over the place, neck as long as a bird’s, and those things startled him, too; otherwise, Butch merely lay there, belly-up on the sofa, a mere slab of meat, while the game shows played, and the men and women of the commercials spoke maturely to one another by telephone, and the auto dealers with hair like creamy snow shouted at him, leaping up and down in front of their cars, heels up and knees out, sport coats stretched to the max, and the solemn brokers in corporate meeting rooms sat around shiny tables while their Chairs and CEOs pointed to charts on easels, explaining in low-key but moving tones why customers always came first.

And though Butch Parker’s eyes sometimes welled with tears, they never once flowed over, thus requiring him to blink hard one time to release one long drop.

 And so the last days of high school went on like that, and though the mornings grew warmer and the winds more fragrant, Butch remained under the bed sheets longer, pretzeled in a fetal ball.  And though the classrooms grew more festive, and the bloom of April and May seeped into the building through the doorways and windows, filling the hallways with promises of summer, a long winter lingered in Butch like a box packed full of Styrofoam.

And worst of all, as graduation and the summer drew near, Rene’s skin turned browner, her face smoother, teeth and the whites of her eyes whiter, and her hair turned wavier, and her muscles worked more freely inside her cotton clothing as she walked down the hallway.

“All I have,” Butch whispered silently to her as she sat front and center in physics, her slender legs crossed, white deck shoe dangling lazily by her toes, its heel bopping up and down, “is what I have in my hands.  All I can give to you is here,” he whispered, laying his hands on the desk, palms up, and regarding them as though they were alien specimens, “in these joints.  If you require large sums of money, a stately manor, two cars with front ends that dip hard when you step on the gas, perhaps I can make these hands be those things.  You never know.  Perhaps if you need career opportunities, a high-rise night life, friends in high fashion, these hands might even be those things.”

“Do you always like to talk to yourself?” someone said on the way out of class.

Startled, Butch turned to behold the round, cheerful face of Rene’s best friend Debbie bobbing down around his shoulders.

“Hey, Deb,” he said.  “What’s that?”

“I figured you were talking in your sleep,” she said.

“How do you mean?”

Butch’s face felt prickly.

“You know,” she said, motioning over a shoulder with her eyes, “Mr. Excitement.”

“Oh.”  Debbie sighed and snapped her gum.  “What was I saying?”

“Basically, I just heard a few mumbles and saw your lips moving.”

“No way,” Butch chuckled, smiling, his neck raised like a chicken’s, eyes glassy.

“Yes way,” Debbie said, pinching Butch in the side of his ribcage.  She continued to walk with him down the hall.  “Hey, are you going to the prom?”  Butch looked down at her, scrunching his lips together in a half frown.  “You’re not?  You are?”

“What do you think?”

“You are.”

“Nope.”

“Really?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Don’t you want to?”  Butch shrugged.  “There’s gotta be a lotta girls that’d go with you, I’m sure.”

“Like?”

Debbie shrugged.

“I’m sure there’s a lot.”  Butch shrugged.  “Oh, come on,” Debbie said, elbowing Butch in the side of his ribcage as they continued down the hall, “cheer up.  It can’t be that bad.  We’re almost out of here.  We’ve got college and our whole lives to look forward to, our careers, families.  We’ve been through a lot, Butch, and we’ve survived it, haven’t we?  Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Am I right?”

“You’re pretty convincing, all right.”

Debbie stopped suddenly and grabbed Butch by an elbow.

“You know, I just thought of something.”  She pointed at Butch’s face, beaming.  “Betty.”

“What?”

“She doesn’t have a date for the prom.”

“So?”

“You two went out, didn’t you?”

“No.  Who?  Where’d you get that?”

“Come on, Butchie.  This is Smoky River.  Girls talk.”

“You may have a point, but I can’t say I like it.”

“Well, it was just a suggestion.  I thought I’d try to help.”

Butch rolled his eyes.

“There’s only one person I’d go with.  You know that,” he said.

“Who?”

They rounded a corner.

“Guess.”

Butch pointed.  Rene was at her locker, putting away her books while leaning against Chevyhead.  He ran his nose and lips up and down the side of her face.  She giggled.

“Oh.”

“Ah, I remember it well,” Butch said.  “Lucky man.”

“What’re you saying?” Debbie said.  “She’s a slut?”

“Huh?”

“She felt a great deal for you, Butchie.  You were really special.  You still are.  She’s told me.”

“Oh yeah?” Butch said, raising his eyebrows and glancing at Rene as they passed her.  She did not notice, but instead seemed to bury her face into Chevyhead’s chest—the whole thing, head and all, as though she were taking a dive.  “Do I win a prize or something?”

“I don’t think she deserves that.”

“Deserves what?”

“You know, treating her like she’s a slut.”

“Who?”

“That’s what you seem to be saying.”

Butch shook his head.  It was vintage Debbie, the defender of reputations.

“I gotta go, Debbie.”

“She deserves better, Butch.  She really gave herself to you, and okay, so things didn’t work out.  It’s not the end of the world.  We’ve got our own lives to go on with.”

“Bye, Deb,” Butch said, waving.