SIN IN PEACE

My confession of the evil I did is not for anyone, yet it could be for everyone. Principally it is just for me, as all confessions are the private property of those who need to make them.

I’m Larry Letourneau, everyone here knows me. Most don’t like me. Or think I’m trash. I was born, raised, raised a lot of hell, in this small town of Peace. My house in Peace is a new ranch—my company built it– in what the people here call Frog Town. Behind our backs these days, although to our faces not so long ago.

This is the part of Peace clustered around Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Sacred Heart Convent—now closed—Sacred Heart School and Sacred Heart Hospital where the French Quebecers, those that are left, still live.

My wife is Maggie– not a Quebecer, Irish—we’ve been married far almost 15 years. She’s obese now, but once was a head. She goes to Sacred heart regularly. We have four kids. They go to Sacred heart with her. Skin and bones, I stay home alone, drink beer or even write a confession now and then.

Sunday mornings like this one I lean a loaded shotgun on the right armrest. It’s there mainly for atmosphere, to keep me in the mood.

I’ve written many confessions, in bold black ink so nothing is missed. I write them with one of those cheap click pens from a motel room in the many somewheres where the company has had a construction site. I collect them, also the women that I find in those town bars to be with me.

I want strong black writing so that my final confession. So when I’ve got it exactly right, it’ll make for easy reading. This one I think might do. Maybe I won’t be tearing this one up and burning the pieces. Maybe this one at last will go into an envelope, together with my will in the metal box, top shelf left of our bedroom closet.

Most important event in my entire life, for good and for bad, was meeting Bradford ‘Ford’ Sanders. Bogaerts Super Market was and still is the hub of action in Peace.  That’s where Bradford Sanders, or ‘Ford’ to me, worked on weekends.  That’s where I met him, as otherwise our lives even in such a small town as Peace would never have crossed.

Peace is slowly dying. What else happens on the High Plains. Before though it was a real town and on Saturdays filled up tight with ranchers and farmers coming to shop, mainly Swedes, Norwegians and Bohemians, maybe catch a movie at the Brown Grand Theater or treat the family to fried chicken at the Skyliner restaurant.

We met because my uncle had me spreading asphalt for a new parking lot at Bogaerts.  It was lava from hell on a real hot day in July. I never have poured asphalt since.

I worked construction then, as I had since 16 when I dropped out of Sacred Heart High after my first year.  Got a job with one of my many uncles, the only one of dad’s brothers who ever had anything–for him a small construction company.  Uncle’s long dead and I have the company now.

That day, shirt off, I showed the good body I had then.  With my long black hair slicked back and my chest muscles oiled with sweat I was pretty good looking at that moment in my life.  I fucked any skirt in sight that would let me hike it, including old man Bogaert’s youngest daughter herself, so I guess the women thought I was a nice enough piece of male meat.  Maybe Ford did too?  Or maybe I wanted him to? That’s one mystery.

Bradford Sanders appeared in my life out the back door of Bogaerts in his store apron ready to sneak a smoke. After fumbling under his apron in his jeans pockets for a while, with a wry look he came over to bum a smoke.

First off we were like pepper and salt, standing together with the asphalt steaming behind us.  Strange how simple things like that can put human earth quakes in motion.

Bradford Sanders stood about 6’1”, taller than me and slimmer built, with fair skin and light hair, big brown eyes and a nice, friendly face—no one ever described me as having a friendly face.  Turned out he’s two years younger than me.

Me, I’m Mediterranean dark, as Maggie says. I’ve got lots of body hair and I’m good looking. Mom always said I was too pretty for my own good. Back then I ran with rowdies.

Ford wasn’t popular at all though. He went to Peace High School, where the French Catholics didn’t go, I heard of him as a stray cat.   The problems being his brains, that he didn’t like sports and acted strange–meaning he had a wild hair up his ass.

After a moment lost searching for something to say, he asked what I drove and I pointed with some arrogance over to my used black Cadillac Fleetwood.  He gestured vaguely to his, almost hidden by trucks at the far back of Bogaerts – an old Studebaker, the rocket-nose kind, painted a creamy white with bright red flames over the rocket head and back around the body.

“Jesus, where you been hiding that cherry bye-bye” I wondered.  A car like that would be pussy bait on the hook in Peace.

I see him shrugging, which he did often.  “I keep it for myself,” was all he said.  That attitude, another part of Bradford Sander’s mystery.

We exchanged names.  Since I couldn’t stand the name Bradford, and he insisted on it in full as he in turn detested ‘Brad,’ which of course was how the better half of Peace knew him by, I dubbed him ‘Ford’  from the beginning.  First time I called him ‘Ford’ he shrugged, but let it be.

So Ford he was when we ran together.  And ‘Ford’ he remains in my thoughts every day. If this confession were for anyone but me, it would be for Ford.

Peace had a long war on in progress, although Ford didn’t seem aware of it.  The town had been settled by French Canadians — in a Protestant State?

Despite its massive Sacred Heart Church, its Catholic schools, convent and hospital, its mass of stern bricking and towers, after Peace was settled things changed.  Protestants came to Peace. Once the town had been all ours. Then we came in second with less than 50%, far less today.

With money and a hit of Protestant adrenaline the newcomers soon took over the commercial and professional life of the town. Like in a gold rush, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Baptists crowded in for a share.   Ultimately it was the Grace Methodist church that became second in size only to Sacred Heart, its white columns up front commanding Peace in size and power.

As we talked and smoked it came out that the Sanders had been in town for about a year, so Ford was still a stranger to all this.  A virgin too I could guess just by looking him over as he drew deep on my cigarette.

He never once said Frog Town.  Did he even know it?  What was it like to be free of my past?  I couldn’t imagine.  More mystery to make him stranger.

I recall how Ford’s mystery became something actually monumental to me when he hesitantly explained that his old man was the Methodist pastor in Peace. All my life I’d been told Protestants were damned, they were the enemy, and more, their priests married in sin and their children were bastards.

So while sharing a long smoke in Bogaerts smoldering parking lot, Ford and I struck up our peculiar friendship. In a town so bitterly divided, we, who should have cold shouldered one another, inexplicably blended. I even told him to meet me at Lester’s Sweet Shop where I hung around sometimes after work trying to score young pussy.  Or if not there to find me always later for a few beers at Josephine’s.

Lester’s, like about everything in Peace was on the main drag, Quebec Street. Yes, the French left a visible mark everywhere, but their big families dragged them down.  I had only 12 brothers and sisters, there were even larger families among us–Luke Chaput came from a family of 21 kids.  It slid us into an underclass.  ‘Frog Town’ became the Protestant taunt to where we lived.

To us these intruders in turn smelled pink, looked pink and were snobs, playing golf and tennis, drinking martinis.  It was unheard of for the two groups to fraternize let along date or marry.  Despite which the two sides could fuck their heads off in the back seats of cars in the middle of the night or even standing against a tree in the dark of the town park.

I did for sure.  Protestant pussy had been forbidden fruit so it became all the better to steal, to taste and poke.

I ran with Frog Town toughs.  We hung out at Lester’s.  Then we drank through the night at Josephine’s–one of three bars in town.  The other two were not for us.

Ford actually showed up at Lester’s one lazy Friday afternoon. Said he needed a cigarette, which became a joke between us.

He wasn’t bad, just full of a wild streak that hadn’t fully come out.  I helped him with that.   Me, I started bad.  Together we were bad and wild.

Despite everything Ford carried a glow of innocence. Maybe his innocence aroused the evil in me? Did I want to destroy it? Not looking for excuses anymore. I’ve read too many books, because of him, found too many reasons for anything.

After Lester’s, I introduced Ford to Josephine’s.  It was a real tank bar, black and stinking.  Josephine didn’t exist. The place was run by Claudette, a woman of about 60 who we called the pizza skag because of the psoriasis on her face. Claudette kept a baseball bat behind the bar and hated her customers, no exceptions.  She’d whack us good on the shoulder just for spilling a glass on her counter.

Saturday nights me and my buddies went to the Moose Lodge dances, more girls and too for fights.  Ford also began coming with me there.

We Frogs loved to fight and that was easy enough in Peace.  The town had two cops, including ‘Chief’ Craznik, a Bohunk who’d graduated from Sacred Heart but disdained us Frog Towners as much as the Protestant elite did.  He even lived with them on their side of town.

Chief Craznik was fat, slow and always in the wrong place at the wrong time. The deputy was a nonentity and I don’t even remember his name.  So basically we ruled the mean side of town.

The fights were a specialty.  They erupted as often as we could figure out how to create them.  The tussling usually took place in the alley behind Josephine’s or in the parking lot of the Moose Lodge.

Some Saturday nights I’d get home late and pretty torn up.  Ma had the same note waiting for me on the frig–“use ice, dumb ass.”

Our enemies were stray Protestants or farm boys come to town for some fun, most often they were ‘fly boys.’ Flyboys were the Air Force.  These fellows drove up to Peace on Saturday nights to get clear of the military police down in the small city were the base was–it’s closed now, like half the stores on Quebec Street.

Flyboys drove up in groups to Peace, cruising at 70 mph for a full hour without a single town in the way a countryside empty then but even emptier now.  The lure being the girls and women of Peace.  Get a piece in Peace was their saying.

Probably this sexual appeal of the town plus its civil war helps explain why it could be such a rough-tough sleazy getaway despite it looking in the morning like a picture perfect place, the very image of the small town American dream.

Ford simply ate it up.  His eyes got bright and fired up in the places where I took him.  My crowd accepted him simply because he was with me. We never talked about whom he was, and I wonder if any of my dirtball pals knew or cared. If he fought with us then he belonged. He was a Frog Towner.

Turned out he wasn’t much of a fighter, although he would get a few slugs in, but he did like Claudette’s beer a lot. She liked him too. He was the only one among us that never got the baseball bat. Pissed me off too. I spread it wide—Claudette’s a dyke, even painted it on the water tower. Only thing to make her mellow was for Ford to put on Roy Orbison’s ‘Claudette’ that she’d guarded on the juke box for maybe a hundred years.

Year round we hung at Lester’s, Josephine’s and also Wetzel’s cafe, the greasiest cheap diner in town. Wetzel’s was a bohunk place. In summer we held down a corner of the town swimming pool and ruled the A&W Drive In, both good for hooking up with curious Protestant girls.

Spring to Fall it was the Big Chief Drive In Theatre–after a few beers we’d piss on the cars next to us, best if they were full of scared looking kids and horrified parents.  Sometimes we had fights right there between the cars, tearing off speakers, popcorn raking across the screen.

Ford seemed to thrive in this world, an underworld at night and most especially on weekends.  It was me that took him to his first dance at the Moose Lodge.  Me that had him drunk most nights at Josephine’s. Me that saw him get his first bloody nose in a fight back of Wetzel’s. Me that got him laid with an old girl of mine–back seat of his Studebaker at the Big Chief.

I think he hung around because in fact aside from beer, fights and girls my badness wasn’t real meanness to him– it could be, at least I already knew so, but for the most part it was under control when Ford was around.  I knew he wouldn’t have liked me otherwise.

Ford and I got to be close friends, best friends, over the first year we knew each other.  Him being in Peace High meant his folks tried keeping him home evenings as best they could, but Ford had his ways around that and over the three years I knew him we managed to have a lot of time together, raise a lot of hell in Peace. It’s even legend now among some people here.

Three years running we destroyed the country club golf course, never once getting caught.  We’d drive our cars there when a light snow fell, then hop the curbing and race the holes swerving and skidding so the entire lawn was left in tire gutted ruins.

Ford in his flaming Studebaker would do the worst damage jerking the steering wheel in real spite back and forth, wolf howling, leaving long deep swaths of destruction in the sod. After the first time, sharing a smoke, he told me it had made him feel like Attila the Hun. It was a while before I learned who he meant.

I also let him in on a particular town secret–a salesman who came to Peace about once a month and stayed at the only hotel, the Baron.  It got round that this guy would blow any young man who knocked on his door.  So one dull Sunday for the hell of it I took Ford knocking.

I recall him strangely unwilling, dragging his ass on the hotel stairs.  To me it was just a free cum, no more.  But it did make Ford uneasy.  I made Ford knock first.  Ford done, it was my turn.

He waited for me in the hall, smoking a cigarette.  As I came out zipping up, he said, and it was all he ever said about it, “Man, that was the cheapest thrill I ever had.”  I didn’t know what he meant, still don’t.

Next time the guy was in town I went alone. After getting blown I beat the fag up, took his money and watch. I belted the guy down flat after his last swallow and punched him into hamburger. All the while him crying and pleading. I knew he couldn’t call the cops. I also knew he’d never be back in Peace.

That incident I did not share with Ford, though he was strangely quizzical about my scraped knuckles. I did it because I wanted to, which is how I lived my life then. Electricity jolting through me, a cat suddenly on the hunt.   Brute anger, and something else too. Evil for me is a secret–it was, is, my own mystery.

Ford showed me another kind of wildness, different, more rebellious I’d say than mine, which were basically bad boy tricks other than those hidden times when that weird electricity got me mean.  It began when he showed me how to break into the his dad’s church.

We trashed it totally, and repeatedly.  Ford even had us clambering up high in the balcony to piss into the organ pipes.  We were drunk but not so we didn’t laugh ourselves weak.

He also taught me how to steal books from the Carnegie Library, just across the street from the Methodist church, a place in Peace I’d never visited, had no interest in.  I still have those books.

“We’re just taking what no one checks out,” he explained with his grin. He made me read them too and even sounded me out to be sure I had.

I think that was the beginning of how I started to enter his world.  The books. They were by guys like Steinbeck. Before long it got worse.

After one time talking about “Crime and Punishment” with Ford– which I then had to skim, stumbling over all those crazy Russian names– he gave me a funny look, remarking in his indifferent way, “Jesus El Pifco, there’s more to Larry Letourneau then all the people I know here.

“You’re deep water, man. You don’t get it, do you.” I bopped him on the arm and said “Cut the crap.”

I assure you, since then I have read “Crime and Punishment” word for word.

Not long after that, this was by then the end of his Junior year, he took me home for the first time.  No more than a quick visit, him indifferent claiming he needed some money–I saw through it, he meant to show me a lot more.

The Sanders lived in Elmhurst, the best part of Peace, the only hilly part of town, the area with winding streets and small parks. The hive of pink Protestants. It was taboo country for Frog Towners.

The Sanders’ house, the Parsonage, was no mansion but to me it was big and swank, a gift to the church from one of the wealthiest families in town.  It had wall to wall carpeting, piped in sound system, indirect lighting, three full baths, four bedrooms, two fireplaces, a split level kitchen.

That first time Ford said no one’s at home, not quite so. There existed a little brother, reading a book in the living room.  A real cute kid, no more than seven or so I suppose. This was a revelation, a part of Ford I hadn’t guessed.  Ford called him Gizmo–I never asked what his real name was.

I sensed Ford didn’t much care for him, although he sure liked telling me how smart the kid was–that Gizmo read most of the same books Ford had stolen from the library, how Gizmo knew all the Beethoven symphonies, played the piano, could name the Roman Emperors in a row.   He said he never could figure why they were 10 years apart in age, just guessed the little shit was a mistake.

Ford laughed over that, “hey, we’re all mistakes, right!”

Downstairs, the family room had wood paneling and native stone–Ford’s bedroom was there too, along with another toilet, the washer room and a storage room.  Ford showed the storage room with a flourish.

It surprised me, after the perfection of the rest of the house it was a mess.  A mattress thrown on the floor, boxes everywhere, piles of newspapers and magazines.

“My mother can’t throw anything away,” explained Ford.  “This is Gizmo hideaway. He’s always reading on that mattress, doesn’t want dad seeing what he’s reading I guess.”

Ford’s own room could hold about two rooms in our place.  In contrast to the house, the floor there too lay strewn with clothes and books, bed unmade, photos of motorcycles tacked to the walls, torn raggedly from magazines.

An expensive blond wood guitar caught my eye–”Yeah, I play.” Shrugged Ford. “Find me the best girl of all and I’ll play for you.”

That guitar remained a discovery about Ford, more so than the little brother or even seeing a house with more books it seemed than the Carnegie Library.

Afterwards I was often in and out of the Sanders’ home.  Gizmo liked me, always beaming at me. He’d be following me with his eyes when I was around.  Trying to get me to talk to him. I could see, if Ford didn’t, that his little brother idolized him–even me too for that matter just because I was a friend of his God- of- a big brother.

Ford’s mother did not like me, naturally.  I knew she wouldn’t.  The way she showed it I’ll never forget.

Ever the true lady she kept a sweet, sure, pretty face; just that she turned it perceptibly to ice when I appeared.  Always polite, welcoming, but an iceberg in my path.

This was my first experience with how well bred Wasps could freeze out what they disapproved of in the world around them.  To this day I see it sometimes in my work, and its power still gets me–for these rulers of American life it’s a weapon come by naturally.

Ford’s dad, The Rev as he called him, was different–no ice, just depression.  We usually found him sunk in front of the TV in the basement family room, ice cream box in hand, spoon in the other.  Not watching the tube, withdrawn there into gloom.  He was the first ice-cream-alcoholic I met.   He’d struggle to life whenever I passed by on route to Ford’s room, turning on a dazzling welcoming charm–but then, duty done, he’d sink back like an deflated sex doll into his aloneness.

Ford said his old man had a terrible temper that came out every now and then. He’d storm about belting him and cursing.  This seemed hard to believe given what I saw of The Rev.

“He never hits Gizmo, just me!”  said Ford first time after meeting him, when we were alone in the bedroom. “I hate the bastard!”

Strange I could relate to the Rev, bad temper and all, and hate Ford’s mother. If it weren’t for Ford’s wild streak–and maybe for me–he could certainly have been one mama’s boy.  Gizmo, for sure.  You’d see him cringe when The Rev walked into the room.  I actually saw the kid hiding behind his mother’s skirts on more than one occasion.

My ventures into the Sanders’ home became frequent enough that I had time to study the house, its furniture and decorations, the rows of books, piles of classical recordings, the art work, their clothes, manners.  Coming from Frog Town it was unreal, a TV show.

After being at the Sanders’, home began looking different.  Our house seemed about the size of two bedrooms in the Baron, scarce cheap furniture from times gone by.  There was one book in the house, a Bible in my parent’s room that I never once saw anyone read. The only picture on our walls was in the living room, of the Virgin Mary with a halo and a red heart like a Valentine’s Day special from Lester’s. No music either, nothing except angry tired cursing.

My own mom was a worn down heap.  Having 13 kids she didn’t focus on any of us. Every month I slipped 50 bucks into her shoe. We didn’t have much in common but I understood. Alone in the family she could speak French. My dad was OK, dumb, always out of work. He hit me only when I was young and not from the heart.

I never once took Ford into the Virgin Mary heart of Frog Town.  He never asked to go either. Always the polite Wasp, even when puking up out back of Claudette’s.

Then Ford began playing his guitar for me. He played damn well too.  He could play jazz or rock, but liked Folk best.

Whenever his parents were away we’d be down together in his room drinking while he played that guitar.  Those are the best of all times I had with Ford.

Sitting alongside him on his bed, leaning back against the wall, cold Coors in hand, him playing the guitar alone to me. His bitter shrugs and wild man laugh were replaced with a calm concentration.  One other thing too, it obviously meant a lot to him to have me in his room, to be there close listening to the guitar. Finally it occurred to me that if it weren’t for me Ford might be lonely. My life had no space for that, not till later, till now.

Once after playing I swore he had tears in his eyes. When he moved over to get another beer, which we had to hide from his folks them being good teetotalers, he put an arm around me.

“You’re my best listener. Know that? You drink music like it’s better than beer.”

The last summer of knowing Ford is always on my mind. Ford graduated but didn’t go to the ceremony, instead we set off cherry bombs in the school parking lot.   We had a lookout for Chief Craznik.

This girl came out of the school, capped and gowned, standing there under the lights of the Auditorium entrance.   Ford went right over to her. I followed; couldn’t keep me away from an unknown twat in Peace.

Obviously she was graduating with Ford and they knew each other too. What a beauty, amazing I’d not seen her before. I still remember her standing there with Ford.   The bug crazed light showing long red hair falling straight to her shoulders, a slight girl with freckles and large green eyes.

“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that sting.” She said after the last cherry exploded. Didn’t have a chance to meet her, heard the lookout instead–Chief fat thighs rolling our way. We scatted.

That last summer hit our all time wildest. A couple of weeks later we three, meaning me, Ford and Donnie Paquette– my other run around pal, the dumb hunk–were at the Peace public pool.  Hot day in June so it splashed packed full. It’s a big pool for a small town.

Some little kid took a dump in the pool. His turdberg bobbled along on the surface near Donnie who, true crude –he’s been in prison for years so I bet he’s the same to this day–plucked it up in his fingers and tossed it at me like a ball.  “Catch!”

I caught it yelping and threw it back at him.  Back and forth went the piece of shit until it began to melt.

Ford lay on the pool edge. When he saw what we were doing, he suddenly began bellowing, “There’s a turd in the pool! There’s a turd in the pool!”

That big crowded pool emptied out faster than if someone had yelled ‘cottonmouths.’  Old people, families, little kids on their own, everyone struggling and shoving to scramble out of the water — men crawled over old ladies, women kicking little kids back into the water, girls screamed, kids bawled.

Over all this I heard Ford’s strange laughter, he was rolling on the hot cement, almost naked except for the swimsuit that by now had sagged halfway down his butt. Ford was laughing harder than I had ever heard him, and he couldn’t stop.

I couldn’t stop grinning sheepishly myself, me and Donnie the only two left in the pool, the shit floating between us–I also couldn’t stop staring at Ford.  I remember an odd sensation seeing that lean body contorting in mirth so that all its sinew, muscles, all its parts glistened wet in a dazzling sunshine.  My eyes were caught finally by a line of blond damp pubes showing above the suit, sunbeams in the hair.

I looked up to see Ford, though laughing, staring at me, directly watching me looking at him.

Late one night I met Ford at Wetzel’s, he came in so drunk that he kept cutting these very loud farts, then yelling “hey, hey, what ya cookin!” I did my best to hush him up, get him to leave–nothing worked.

Mrs. Wetzel called Chief Craznik who came and took Ford over to the Corbett County jail.  Chief wasn’t about to book the Methodist preacher’s boy for farting at Wetzel’s so he called up The Rev in the middle of the night to come down and fetch him home.

This didn’t help father-son relations.  According to Ford the parsonage was now a battle zone, although he just shrugged it off with his crooked smile. “All he does is talk about finding a college for me the furthest away possible.” Ford himself never talked about college.

Then the Sanders went on their vacation, in August, as usual to the Minnesota lakes.  Ford refused to go, said he’d had enough of Bemidji, Paul Bunyan and Big Blue. He had a new job anyway with the State Highway Commission– guess what — laying asphalt.

He was one sunburned and lava-smoked fellow all that summer long.  His new aura made him stand out more, more handsome, more different then before.

We had some hardcore parties in the parsonage while his folks were away.

Ford began seeing a girl of his own.   He wouldn’t bring her by so usually he’d be out late with whomever it was, on the secret wherever, when destruction was on a tear back at his place.  Miss green eyes, I guessed.

Toward the end of The Rev’s vacation we had one last riot at the house. Even Ford stayed home that night.  A fly boy I’d had a fight with once, then gotten to be a fuck buddy with, brought in some weed.  We smoked that and it hit us hard as Claudette’s baseball bat.  Then more beer, more weed.

I called some girls I knew and they came by.  Me, Ford, Donnie and the fly boy–don’t recall his name–fucked those broads about blind, fucked like young guys can when they go mad for it.  We danced like animals.

Ford took off his clothes in the Rev’s study and came out wearing nothing but a pair of one girl’s panties.  It was so funny that we three did the same.  Then the girls put on our underwear.

We snaked around the parsonage like Satyrs and Nymphs getting steamy and ready for more, Ford disappeared at one point to piss.  I needed to as well so staggered after him.  He was in The Rev’s big bathroom, just off his parent’s bedroom.  He was pissing joyfully in the sink so I took the john.

The bathroom had a large mirror along the wall we faced.  Sink and john side by side.  Ford was swaying and as if to steady himself put his bare, golden haired arm over my naked shoulders.  His girl’s panties were down around his knees.

That’s when it happened.  I finished pissing,  Ford too.  But we just stayed swaying in place, dazed and unsteady, his sun-glowing arm around me, staring at each other in the mirror.  Salt and Pepper.   Cut, uncut.

Without thinking I put my hand down around his pussy-slickened cock.  I held it real tight, hard enough I thought to hurt.  His cock turned to granite.

I moved my hand away fast, pulled up my panties and was out of there. Ford’s jungle laughing followed me back down the hall to the party.

In the night Ford or someone wrote “We fucked in your bed” in lipstick on The Rev’s bathroom mirror.  Next morning his folks came home early to find the eight of us passed out in various beds, in panties and underwear, or nothing, the house reeking of weed and cigarettes, the floors littered with beer cans and empty bottles of Jack Daniels — and too that lipstick message on their bathroom mirror.

How we were evicted is lost. I recall no shouting, no scene, no unseemly unpleasantness of any kind.  The Rev had Mrs. Sanders and Gizmo stay in the car, eyes averted—although Gizmo did give me a wink on the sly as I stumbled off.  Out we revelers were sent, somewhat clothed, bleary eyed–leaving Ford and The Rev alone to duke it out.

After that I didn’t see Ford for about a week or more. Finally, one afternoon late he phoned me at home just after I’d got off work. He was drunk.

“Come get me Maynard, come now.”

Passing through the stone pillars into Elmhurst, then down the hill, I saw him immediately.  He was waiting for me lying spread eagle on the parsonage lawn for all to see.  A suitcase lay on the grass beside him.  His shirttail was hanging loose, zipper down, looked like he hadn’t combed his hair or shaved.

“Hey Maynard!”  That was his name for me that summer, Maynard Mumbly.  He only used it when he was feeling good and in a mood to like me more than usual.  “Maynard, I am leaving Peace,” he said this struggling to his feet.

“I’m taking this along too, sorry.”  he pulled his dick out and stroked it playfully before stuffing it away.

“The Rev so kindly presented me with a bus ticket of my very own… I got a bus ticket here somewhere,” he went fumbling in his jeans pockets helplessly–I finally stepped forward, sober for once, and went through his jacket pockets to find the ticket.  It was one way to Boston.

“Hey I got money too.  You need some?”  he held a wad at me, looked like a lot.

“Get in the car,” I ordered, “You’re coming to live with me.  Mom won’t notice your skinny ass.”

“Why I thank you kind sir, but no I got a ticket see.  I got money.  And I’m a poor cowpoke that knowd he done wrong,”  This last he sort of sang out.

“We gotta go, Maynard.  That bus won’t wait….Here,” he threw me his car keys.  “The Studebaker’s yours, a fare thee well.”

Now he had that hard Bradford look on, that cold Sanders aloofness.  Giving the orders, he expected to be obeyed.

So I took Ford to the bus stop down on Champlain Street–stuck among the bad places, mine–a block from the Baron Hotel, not far from Josephine’s, near Wetzel’s, which was closed at the time for a sanitation violation.   On Quebec Street, the Peace High girls would soon show up at Lester’s–hot little holes wondering what thrill they might find.

None of this deterred Ford.  The Greyhound pulled in.  He got on.  We didn’t shake hands or say goodbye.  He didn’t even notice when I stuffed all the cash I had on me into his coat pocket. Just gotten paid too, but what the hell, it was Ford.

“Maynard, you my one friend. . .  Never had another. . .  Guitar’s yours, it’s in my room, its gotta be yours.”  Then the Greyhound swooshed shut and went, turning to disappear at the Moose Lodge corner. Taking Ford East of Eden.

It left Peace. Left me standing lost with nothing to look forward to.   Soon as that Greyhound blew exhaust out of sight the first of much loneliness grabbed hold. Nobody left to talk to me. No music. No more lessons on books. No one to take along on my joy ride to hell.

I know now that loneliness and anger are dangerous in a man as fucked up as I am.

Ford left on a Friday.  The following Sunday morning I went to get his–now my–guitar.  I had no use for the Studebaker, not my style.

I went when I knew the Sanders would be at church, the house empty and unwatched.  Sure enough they’d left the backdoor only on chain.  I eased my fingers through the crack in the door and slipped it .

Standing back in the foyer to their kitchen I took a last time feel of it, soaking up their house in its solitude– in mind I saw all their books, the frames on the walls, the fabrics of their furniture, heard a classical melody in the air.

I savored it, but at the same time suddenly hating it. I was in a bad mood, I admit, sad at losing Ford, feeling like I ought to have gotten on that bus with him. Excuses.

Down in the basement I was unpleasantly startled to find Gizmo. He lay in pajamas on that bare mattress in the storeroom reading a book he didn’t want his father seeing.  I knew he’d skipped church by playing sick–yes, he was a bright eight year old kid.

He perked up seeing me.  “Hi Maynard, how’d you get in here? You know Bradford got kicked out?  Daddy made him go! You want a Dr. Pepper? They’re in the fridge. I can get it for you …”

Gizmo pulled at his pajama bottoms to get them straightened up proper and looked about ready to talk to me forever.

I said nothing, couldn’t think of anything to say.  I went into the downstairs john for a leak, resentful as hell to have found Gizmo.  Standing there pissing I absently opened the medicine cabinet fumbling with my free hand through its contents.

My hand came up with a well known, well used tube of Vaseline, which made me smirk thinking of how it had been of help so many times in this house in ways some wouldn’t believe.

Suddenly the tube seemed stuck in my hand, powerful as a gun. I went back with it to Gizmo.

I sat down on the mattress beside him.  He had the same big brown eyes as Ford, same light skin and fair hair.   Without a word I reached over and pulled his pajama bottoms down and off his legs.  He jumped like a frog in biology class.

“Don’t do that!” he tried to get them back.

I had his legs spread by then, crooked up high at the knees. He’d been in the sun that summer and his legs were the same color, had the same soft golden hair as his brother’s.

“Please don’t, stop!”

Gizmo was heaving like to die, face blotched, still weeping, calling for ‘Mama!’ into the rough palm of my brick layer’s hand.

“Shut up.” I whispered in his ear.  He stifled another scream and went limp again.  It was done fast. I panicked then.  This had been a crime.

Not far from the mattress I spied a bicycle pump.  Taking it up I inserted the tip into the boy’s anus.

“Listen good, don’t dare tell anyone, ever, what we did.   You even think about telling and I come back here for you.  I’ll stick this nozzle up your butt.  Just like this!”  I turned the nozzle in his ass and he yelped in agony.

“I’ll pump it till your insides explode. Your guts will blow out of your mouth, run like snot from your nose. Come out of your ears, your ass like toothpaste.  You’ll be blood and guts all over.  You hear!”

Gizmo had stopped moving, bawling. He lay there like he was drunk and passed out.

“One word, you are dead.  You’ll look so bad they’ll puke when they find you!”  I dug the pump nozzle in a little deeper.

The boy arched his back, nodding wildly.

I left him like that on the bed. On the run then, and for sure by now it’s been a long run, Paused just long enough to grab the guitar from Ford’s room.

At the top of the stairs, the parsonage was again as before. Except I could hear it now. An only sound. A soft moaning from deep inside the house – from the violated core of that damn superior house.

After that except for work I hid then for a long while in the dark side of Peace.   Kept the Fleetwood at home.   For a couple of weeks I hovered close to shadows and the sides of the buildings as I walked those dismal streets, expecting Chief Craznik to catch me curbside, siren blaring.

Every day I expected to see Ford– coming towards me fumbling in his jeans, then asking to bum a cigarette.   Would he do that, or would he crack me open like a crab for Gizmo?

Above everything I felt very sorry for myself. Drinking same for many lost souls became the refuge for my damned head.

I stopped going to the Moose Lodge, to Wetzel’s, anywhere bright and public. No fights. I didn’t go out for quick fucks. Seemed the badness, the electrical meanness in me had shorted out.

My pals were puzzled but soon didn’t bother with me, even Bobby Boudreau, Luke Chaput, Donnie Paquette. They tired of me brooding in Josephine’s back corner.

Then one night late, hiding in my hideout, on the stool that had come to be mine there came a gentle tap-tapping on my shoulder bone. I jerked away. Those days I always sat on guard for a tap on the shoulder.

But it was long red hair and green eyes. Even in semi darkness and beer stink I knew who she was — Venus arising.

“Mind moving over so I can sit in your corner?” she asked. “I need to hide here more than you do.”

I scooted, somewhat bedazzled after weeks alone, disoriented being around someone other than the guys I worked with–and beautiful. It didn’t occur to me to flirt, to go straight for her box as I knew how to do so well.   None of that.

I didn’t say a word to her, just moved. Then I turned away and went back to my beer, although I felt keenly self-conscious of my unsteady hand, how troubled I looked, seeing in my mind that she was intently studying me a few inches away.

I’d just put on “Claudette” for Claudette. To please her since I’d come to like her –I knew she felt sorry for me and I wanted someone’s pity.

Song finished, green eyes whispered to me up close. “Larry Letourneau . . . I know your name.   I’ve been looking for you. I’ve never forgotten you . . .”

She took my hand off the beer glass and held it in hers–a small hand with determination in its bones.

“My name’s Maggie. Bradford told me about you. He said you were a mean rogue but that it was just a mask. He said you were probably the most unusual fellow in Peace. Did you know that’s what he thought?”

Sin and damnation, salvation and heaven–we poor humans spin in our spheres around those dead stars and suns.

That Fall I fell in love with Mary Margaret McGhee. My Maggie!  We got married in Sacred Heart just before Christmas.  Still ponder if I wasn’t taking something else from him.

Not more than a couple of months after we had settled down my most beautiful and beloved Maggie cracked up.  It just suddenly happened, her standing at the stove, her back to me, lovely red hair falling loose to her shoulders. That was her pre-obese period.

She said the following, close to word for word.

“OK, so now I’ve got to tell you the truth. I can’t bear it by myself,” She seemed to be panting out the words, turning to stare out the window, avoiding me and her sizzling frying pans. The snow outside coming up almost to the window sill.

“It was me seeing Bradford all that summer you guys were playing jungle at his parents.  He told me, laughing the way he did,“ she looked hard and angry.

“We were in love. I still love him. You hear that?

“You screw me, OK. But that’s all. I went looking for you in Josephine’s because you were the closest thin to him I could get hold of. Bradford was the best thing ever here. You made him dirty and then you made him leave.

“Didn’t you figure out, smart as you think you are, that his parents sent him off to protect him from you! I lost him because of you!   I end up with you! That’s my fault, agreed . . . Now don’t start blubbering.”

Women can be blinded by vanity, my eyes were dry as burnt toast—which is what I remember smelling.

If you still want me to stay, I will.  I’ll have your kids.  And I’ll take good care of you until we die.” Her good girl confession told, mine got silenced. Sent me off to look up the word ‘irony.’

That’s when I started becoming another being. She knocked me up those years ago at the kitchen table of a dumpy rental we lived in at the time. Maggie played it except what she begat in me was not what she expected.

I’m born a Frankenstein monster put together with fancy books, music, art. I have no heart, no soul, neither joy . . . nor pain—or almost none. The mistake I made then was thinking it done with. It isn’t.

Soon after I saw Gizmo again by accident. He was walking to school with a friend when I drove by them on my way to a work site.  I was cruising slow looking for the house number.

When I recognized him it was too late to do much about avoiding him. I still had the Fleetwood then and its tires flapped noisily along the brick streets of Peace. Pitifully, to hide I tried slouching down at the wheel.

My stomach turned. Sweat soaked my shirt. I wanted to slam the accelerator to the floor. Instead I rolled on in slow frozen terror, helpless to escape whatever punishment came next.

Gizmo waved heartily at me, face lighting up.  Ford’s face.  “Hey Maynard Mumbly! Where you been!”  Fords’ voice as a boy.

Nothing else to do but stop — Gizmo ran eagerly up to the passenger side window to peer in at me. “You hear anything from Bradford?”  I shook a sharp no.

“Don’t you want his Studebaker?” Another ‘no.’

“It’s leaking on Daddy’s driveway so he says if you don’t take it away he’ll have it towed off for junk . . . Mother says to come visit, she wants to talk to you. . .”

All this kid babble, with the boy beaming in at me just as he had when Ford would bring me around.  Like nothing had ever happened.

After I rolled on with a nonchalant wave, I turned fast at the next corner. Angling the Fleetwood into the nearest empty driveway I lurched to a stop, threw open the door and heaved.  Shrouded in an immense darkening cumulus, in a stranger’s driveway, I cowered low in the stink of fresh puke.

For a while I just sat there about to shit with fear, trembling along with the Fleetwood’s out- of- tune idle, the car around me vast and black as a hearse.

Gizmo I understood was crazy. This part of my crime had never occurred to me. I’d not only molested him; I’d fucked his mind.

My nightmares started then, of a little boy’s agonized face. Purple face and puffy red eyes. His tears roll through my clenched fists. His small body contorts under mine in pain. I hear his screams over and over.

The Sanders left Peace a couple of years after Ford was expelled from paradise.  Never saw or heard from them– from him— again.

Today’s a fine spring morning. I’m here sitting to write in Sunday aloneness. I’m in my living room. Behind this leather easy chair I keep my treasure.  Ford’s guitar. It’s guarded by stacks of books and records, a shrine of remembrance, and shame.

My review of what I have written, these ruled pages of illegible scrawlings, is that too familiar shrug.  I understand it’s a way of answering without forming an opinion or making a statement.

I do know l am the man who sees in his mind my Ford smoking that same cigarette I gave him in Bogaerts parking lot. Sees him basking on the banks of the Peace Public Pool, shining before me in translucence, golden, virtually naked, laughing. There are diamonds in his hair.

He gives me back a daily shrug.

Duly, fully confessed, even if only with one witness, I sit alone here now empty as my beer can.

So then, where is the forgiveness?