THE TU-TONE
DeSOTO
by D.H. Robbins
Chapter One
A SolidShake! and
Trippple-burger
September 26, 1960
Connie grips the two aluminum tubes of the porch swing’s arm and imagines them as the twin barrels of her father’s shotgun. Through the open front door and windows behind her, she had heard the predictable slow muffled crash coming from the kitchen. Her mother, drunk again, has fallen from her chair to the floor. Connie tightens her grip on the gritty tubes as desperately as her sixteen-year-old grasp would allow.
“God dammit, Jake!” she hears her mother rasp, “When’re you ever gonna fix this goddamned chair?” It was as if she was blaming her drunkenness on the chair.
From inside the house, the wood frame of the over-used living room couch creaks annoyingly as her father quietly and routinely rises to attend to his drunken wife. “I’m coming, Vera, dammit,” her father groans as he makes his way toward the kitchen. “Just hold your horses!”
Coalescing into the warm light of the porch where Connie sits is the soft pale glow from the 17-inch Dumont console television where her father had been watching it in the living room. Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy debate one another for the United States presidency as Howard K. Smith moderates.
She concentrates on listening to the distant voices from the TV. “Uh, I believe that Vice President Nixon is only paying lip service to the increase of the minimum wage to a dollah an houah,” Kennedy has gone on in his distinct Massachusetts accent. Connie knows that Massachusetts is a place she will never see. She feels doomed to be trapped in an ordinary life here in Hanson, Iowa–at least once she is freed from the dysfunctions of her parents.
It has been getting worse between her them. Her father’s attentions had been directed toward his deteriorating wife and have freed Connie from her fear of his threatening desires toward her as she has grown into adolescence. The cold comfort of her father’s ignoring her has left her gratefully invisible to him. But she knows it’s only a matter of time, as she has seen the wanton glances he has leveled at her from within the darkness of his libido. She feels as helpless as prey for a hidden tiger ready to spring when she’s around him.
Feeling only a little safer now that her father distanced himself in the kitchen, Connie relaxes her grip on the dry naked tubes of the chair arm. She picks up her glass of orangeade from the chipped paint metal end table and vacantly sips as she directs her gaze down the street toward the homes where more normal families live.
A row of two-story Craftsman and Victorian houses are hunched neatly together behind their outsized front porches. Each side of the street is lined with an irregular row of thick-trunked elms and the few junipers for which the street is named. Dim illumination from the streetlights filters through the breeze-rustled foliage and plays among the shadows of this unusually warm late September evening. The barking of the Jurgen’s spaniel puppy from a few houses away sets off a chain reaction of itinerant canine replies down the block. A light gust spirals the wind sculpture suspended from the arch at the far end of the porch into a lazy twirl. The feeble yellow glow from the porch light flows unevenly the over rotating sculpture’s planes.
She then hears the sharp rasp of badly shifted gears. The dull luminance of car headlights irradiates that of the streetlights dappling through the trees. She stands up as the aqua and dark blue 1956 De Soto Firedome rounds the corner from Brentwood Street onto Juniper and then stops at the curb in front of her house. The giggling of the driver and her younger passenger are nearly drowned out by the volume of the car radio.
Sixteen-year-old Maxie arches her lithe four-foot-nine body out of the car window. She is wearing an oversized red and black-checked flannel shirt that emphasizes her small physique. A shaggy bob of light brown hair flounces briskly around her lean, broad-featured, thinly freckled face. Her wide blue eyes accentuate an impish expression as she sings along loudly and badly over the voice of Frankie Avalon singing “Venus”.
Connie puts her orangeade on the porch railing. She steals out toward Maxie and the car’s driver, Maxie’s eighteen-year-old sister, Julie. Connie cringes as she paces down the front walk. “Shh!” she scolds through a shiver. “Keep it down, Max! You’re gonna wake the whole neighborhood. Shh!”
“Knock it off, little sister,” says Julie from behind the wheel as she lowers the radio’s volume and leans across Maxie toward the open window where Connie has leaned down. “We’re meeting Beau Harper down at The Pit Stop. Are you up for some fun, Connie?”
Connie casts a worried glimpse back at her house.
“Come on,” Maxie urges. “Really, it’ll be fun.”
She silently mulls over her decision as her mother’s voice rises incoherently over that of her father’s from inside the house. The two girls in the car haven’t seemed to have heard Connie’s parents, and she wonders if she alone had been conditioned to her mother’s shrieks, as her mother may have been to her own cries from the crib 16 years ago.
“Beau might bring some bee-er,” Julie entices confidently.
Maxie smirks and twiddles her low-hanging bangs as Connie gazes back at them. The mild glow from the streetlight behind Julie causes a dim corona to form behind her shoulder-length, silky blonde hair. “Maxie, you and I shouldn’t drink,” Connie begins.
“And I came along to make sure the two of you don’t,” Julie assures them.
Another crash sounds from the house. “No, Jake, you bastard! I won’t!” her mother screams angrily at her husband. The sound of a northbound freight rumbling toward Council Bluffs from a quarter mile away filters through her mother’s drunken resistance.
“We aren’t waitin’ all night, girl!” Maxie tells Connie as she opens the car door.
“I probably should check with,” she begins as she hears: “Screw you, Jake! Just screw you!” The “screw you” sounds as if it were tucked into one slurred syllable with a little dip between the words.
She hears the rickety kitchen screen door slam as her mother retreats to the rusty glider out in the dirt patch of the backyard. The glider is Vera’s summer hideaway, as is the attic where she often hibernates to drink in the winter. Connie imagines her mother grasping her beer can as if it is the only thing left for her to hold on to.
She smiles mirthlessly down at the ground. “I’m going out,” she whispers hoarsely toward the house. “I’ll be home before midnight.” As if to hide the ugly but familiar incident happening behind the dirty white clapboard exterior of her home, Connie’s rueful smile turns puckish as she scrambles into the front seat next to Maxie.
_____________________________
The Pit Stop, known for its “Solid-Shake!” and its “Trippple-Burger” with secret sauce, is on Center Boulevard, three blocks down from the Rexall Drug Store on Durant Street, which cuts through the middle of Hanson, Iowa; one of the last whistle stops before Council Bluffs. With a history built on corn and the railroad connecting east to west, Hanson is surrounded by grain elevators and stitched throughout with railroad tracks. In view of the Pit Stop’s parking lot, the Missouri River undulates listlessly under the three-quarter moon in the darkening sky.
A block away, the 9:13 p.m. local diesel train hisses before it whines up to full throttle. The clank of its cars being pulled into motion intermingles with groan of its hoarse, woebegone whistle. It is bound for Burlington Station in Omaha, a trip all of them have taken many times. It serves as a reminder of one they haven’t taken in a long time.
“Mmm,” Maxie mumbles as she sips through the straw of her Solid-Shake! and then looks at Julie. “They’re opening this new shopping center out on Dodge next Saturday.”
“We certainly can’t miss that,” Connie murmurs facetiously as she offers a weary smile over her Trippple-Burger.
Julie notices Connie’s light sarcasm and cocks her head at her. “You okay, Connie? I mean, really. You okay?”
“Yeah,” she answers uncertainly. “Yeah, sure.”
“You seem a little, I don’t know, off-center, tonight.”
“She’s fine,” Maxie assures her sister. “Can we get some more fries?”
Julie reaches behind Maxie, touches Connie’s shoulder and feels its recoil. “If you ever want to talk about it,” she confides.
Shut up, Julie! Don’t touch me! Connie wants to cry. Instead she dryly whispers, “I’m okay.” The angular planes of Julie’s long features and the little swell of her eyelids are pronounced by the feeble red, green and yellow neon glows from the Pit Stop sign. Connie smiles warmly to counter Julie’s look of concern.
A new top-40 hit, “(My love is higher than a) Mission Bell” sung by Donnie Brooks, trips out over KOIL-AM from Omaha. Its tone trips about the white and turquoise vinyl environment of the car, seeming to accent the light, ubiquitous scents of vinyl, plastic and French fries.
“Well, Jewel!” Beau Harper gloats confidently as he suddenly appears and leans through her window. A pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes shows above the rolled-up sleeve of his white T-shirt. He displays a missing incisor in his crooked smile. He turns his wide-open, icy blue gaze toward Maxie. “Hey, brat,” he says.
“Hey, yerself, Beau,” Maxie pouts.
He rests his bony forearms on the ledge of Julie’s window to put himself at ease. There is a crude tattoo of the “Li’l Devil” cartoon character with “Born for Trouble” inked beneath it within the light glaze of freckles on his right bicep. He nods toward Connie. “Who’s she?”
“That’s Connie,” Julie says. “This’s Beau Harper,” she tells Connie. “Haven’t you met?”
“No,” he answers smoothly and extends a hand that takes hers in his oddly feather-like grasp. Connie smiles faintly as she pulls her hand away and stares down at her half-eaten Trippple-Burger. Beau’s self-assured simper falls to a look of mild rejection.
“D’jeu bring a little, like, dividend with you, Beau?” Julie asks.
His hand slides to one of Julie’s knees hidden in the shadow beneath the dash and he inches it upward. “Now, what dividend might that be, Jewel?” he teases.
When Beau’s hand has reached a point beyond where it might cause trouble, she clamps her knees together and lifts his hand up between her thumb and forefinger. He gets the point and helps her pat her skirt into place. “The beer you promised,” she tells him.
He raises his gaze from her lap, and he looks at the two fifteen-year-old girls, then back at Julie. “Unh-hunh, yeah,” he grunts as he sweeps a shock of his thick blond hair from his sunburned forehead. He stands up and opens the door. “Come on, Jewel, we gotta talk private.”
“Beau,” she whines in complaint.
“Come on, Jewel, out of the car.”
He leans down and smirks at the other two. Maxie sends back a bemused glance and blows a little puff of breath up toward her bangs as she does when she’s perplexed. Connie flashes Beau an indolent look as Julie swings her tall frame out of the car. Julie has grown up gracefully in advance of her year-younger sister. There is an effervescence in her light-blue eyes, clear-skinned features and defiant smile. It is a confident look Maxie rarely sees when Julie is around her parents. “Oh, Beau,” Julie scoffs.
“Jew-el,” he mocks, and then glances at the two girls. “We won’t be long, kids.”
Maxie rifles her bangs with another puff. “What a dwink!” she comments after her sister and her boyfriend have retreated into the drive-in’s diner.
Connie sighs. “They’re all dwinks. All boys are dwinks.”
“Well, some of them.”
“Max,” Connie says suddenly snapping out of her depression and bristling into confidence. “D’you think Julie and that guy, you know, have, well, you know—?”
Maxie shudders and grits her teeth. The bridge of her nose crinkles in distaste. “Pee-ewww! Jeepers, Connie, do y’think she—with him?”
“I asked you.”
“I wouldn’t kn—,” Maxie begins to reply. “Oooh! I love this!” She turns up the volume on the The Everly Brothers singing “Cathy’s Clown.”
“You think they wrote that for Kathy Boland?” Connie asks. “You know, the one who sits in the fourth row in Mr. Oster’s class?”
“You mean her?” Maxie says sourly.
“Yeah, well, John Wiler’s going crazy over her.”
“Kathy’s got no figure,” Maxie mutters as she indolently checks on her own unexceptional development.
“Hah! You’re not in her gym class, Max,” Connie replies with a toss of her head. A warm neon glow swells across her face. A stray strand of her thick dark-brown hair glitters against her cheek, and she brings her hand up to brush it away. Maxie notices how Connie’s usually soft hands now appear peculiarly old in this moody half-light.
“Hey, kids!” Julie says as she bangs on the car window frame to get their attention. Maxie rolls down the half-opened window. “Listen, Penny, can you cover for me tonight?”
“What?”
“Tell Mom and Dad I’m, uh, staying over at Hannah’s or something.”
“Ju-leee,” Maxie whines incredulously. “What about the car? How’re we gonna get home?”
“You can drive it, hon. You’ve done it before.”
“I don’t even have my lisc—”
“You have a permit,” Julie interrupts. “Come on. You can do it.”
“This,” Connie says enthusiastically, “I have got to see.”
“Come on, Julie, for iced cake, stop ticking me off. You know I can’t drive at night! I’m not allow—”
“No, Penelope,” Julie insists as she furrows her brow. “You’re ticking me off. You’ve driven this car during the day. This is the same thing, only darker.”
“Thanks a heap, Julie,” Maxie grumbles.
Connie leans into the conversation. “Can I drive?” she asks breathlessly through a mischievous smile.
“No!” Julie barks at her. Then to Maxie: “Penelope, this is important.”
Maxie looks over her sister’s shoulder at Beau standing in the dim light. He leans confidently against the hood of his blue and yellow-primed 6-year-old Ford Crestline. Maxie is overcome by a wave of hatred for him as her angry, knitted-browed look turns to one of confusion and dismay. She puffs up at her bangs again. “Julie, are you and Beau gonna go off and do it, or something?”
Julie looks back over her shoulder. Beau brings an oil-smudged finger to his lips to shush her and to preserve their secret. She looks back at Maxie and bites her lower lip. “No,” she insists with conviction. “Look. Mom and Dad aren’t even gonna to ask about me, okay?”
Connie detects the kind of choke in Julie’s tone reserved for children who are neglected by their parents.
“Ju-leee?” Maxie pleads in a whisper.
Her sister stands away and all Maxie sees in the curved frame of the car window is Julie’s slender-fingered, polished-nailed hand waving her away. “I’ll be home right after midnight, Penny. I promise. Leave the den window open. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? The thing for the lights is to the left of the thing near the cigarette lighter. Pull it and they’ll turn on.” She walks away.
“Shit!” Maxie mutters in a sharp whisper.
“Shh! Max!” Connie scolds her and then speculates, “Let her go. She needs to, you know—” She looks over at Beau. “Whatever.” Then half to herself, she says, “I wish I had Julie’s kind of—”
“Stupidity?” Maxie answers as she watches them get into his car. He then pops open a bottle of beer and hands it to Julie. The Crestliner’s engine rumbles viciously as Beau turns on the ignition. The tires chirp on the pavement and the car lurches through the neon and florescent patches toward the darkness in the opposite direction of Julie and Maxie’s home.
Maxie pulls her horn-rimmed glasses from the pocket of her flannel shirt. She slips them on to inspect the immense, glittering white, aqua-padded dashboard with the big and little circular dial faces and instruments as she tries to remember what switch does what. She glances to the left of the steering wheel at the protruding square push-button shift console on the dashboard.
Connie quietly collects the wrappers and wax cups from their meal and takes them to a nearby wire trashcan. She looks into the dirty, crushed waxed-paper cups and crumpled wrappers as she thinks about Kathy Boland. She wonders if John Wiler is also thinking about Kathy tonight, then wonders if Kathy would even care. Kathy and John are strangers to one another, as Connie feels like a stranger to everyone else except Maxie. Her thoughts eventually lead back to her disgust with her parents—particularly her father.
She rarely dares to venture into the lingering kind of hope that so often leads her only to despair. Tonight, though, she’s found reassurance and hope in Julie’s defiance.