My Heart Can't Tell You No, Page 5

  “I know. You weren’t invited. See ya later, Lena.”

  “Where are your glasses, Jackie?” Sarah asked, relieved to see the three girls walking in the opposite direction than they were heading.

  “In my pocket,” he answered his mother.

  “I didn’t pay out all that money for you to wear them in your pocket.”

  “Okay,” he sighed, pulling them from his shirt. “I’ll put them on. Only because I’m carrying the Mouse, and we’ll be walking in the dark. I wouldn’t wanna drop her, she’d get lost and we’d never find her.”

  “You better not drop me,” Maddie warned, pulling her arms tighter around his neck.

  “Did you see me throw the ball tonight?” Jackie asked her.

  “No.”

  “Why not?!”

  “I couldn’t see which one was you. They all looked the same. But I saw the one who caught it. Mom says it was Johnny. Does that mean Johnny won the game?”

  “So much for your swelled head, Jack,” Joe laughed at him.

  “Yeah, but what about John’s?” asked Jackie.

  “John’s head couldn’t swell if ya had an air pump attached to his ear.”

  Joe saw the girl waiting at the edge of the bridge, a pretty little thing with brown hair. The rest of her held a passive beauty that was captivating, if you took the time to look past the clothes she was wearing. A little out of date, obviously second-handed, but clean, even at times a little baggy for her short stature. His glance moved to Jackie, seeing he had seen her also as his face took on an almost peaceful expression. At school everyone assumed Sue was going steady with Jackie, an assumption Sue planted and helped to flourish, and although Jackie took her out occasionally, Joe knew she wasn’t the one Jackie would eagerly seek out. The fact that he was seeing someone else was kept hidden, but it wasn’t Jackie’s idea. If it were up to him, he’d shout from the rooftops that he was in love with Brenda Taylor. But they had to be careful, for Brenda was still only a sophomore. Brenda’s and Jackie’s relationship began to blossom when, as a freshman and a junior, they would meet in the school library and noticed their interests were much the same. Jackie was captivated by her, but he knew a poor girl from the south side of town would be ripped apart in no time by the golden girls like Sue and Lena and their friends.

  “Here, John, you’re Maddie’s hero tonight.” Jackie smiled as he handed his little sister to his younger brother.

  “Hi Brenda,” Sarah smiled. “You coming over to Lew’s?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Brenda answered.

  Jackie lagged behind Joe and the rest of his family, quietly slipping his hand into the young girl’s as they all crossed the short bridge that separated the rest of the city from the road where Lew and a few other families lived.

  “Well, if it isn’t the stars of the team,” Lew’s wife, Janet, called as the group of people moved into the small kitchen already crowded to capacity.

  “Some stars. If the wind hadn’t been blowing when Jackie threw that ball it wouldn’t have traveled fifteen feet, let alone forty yards,” Lew teased. “And Johnny only caught the ball because he tripped over his big feet, otherwise he would have been way outta range.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell them,” Joe said.

  “Oh yeah? And what were you doing over on the other side of the field with those four guys on top of ya? Dancin’?”

  “Well, I thought I’d give John a chance at it.”

  “Brenda, what are ya doing with a mangey mutt like Jackie?” Lew asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. He’s kind of a cute little puppy, don’t ya think?”

  “So, when are you two gettin’ married?” Lew asked, making Brenda’s face deepen to a crimson.

  “She’s only fifteen,” said Jackie. “Now, if you guys will excuse us, we’d like to go for a walk.”

  “Be back by eleven or you’ll lose your ride home,” Jack told his oldest son.

  Joe took a seat across from Lew and Sarah and picked up Maddie to sit on his lap, where she leaned back against his chest. He knew Jackie and Brenda were going to the dike, but close to the bridge they had crossed a few minutes ago. It was another three miles to the river party that Brenda would never be allowed to attend. He knew she would fill a need in Jackie’s heart this night that his cheerleader-admirers could never get close to.

  “Maddie! Come on! Let’s play!” One of Lew’s sons ran from the room and spotted her, then after relaying the message to the rest of Lew’s ever-growing family, ran back to retrieve Maddie from Joe’s lap.

  “You guys be careful with her!” Lew yelled in the room at his romping sons. “Hey, brat!”

  Maddie stopped in her tracks, her face turning with an eager smile toward her uncle. “What?”

  His answer was a tongue he stuck out, making her giggle before returning the gesture and running into the room again.

  By ten that night Tommy and Bobby were in the kitchen hanging over Jack’s and Lew’s shoulders, listening to the fast-moving conversation between the four adults while Johnny sat on the floor, munching on a sandwich and listening with as much interest as the younger boys. At the other end of the house, Lew’s children were asleep in their bedrooms as Maddie slept on the sofa, giving Joe his chance to move outside to sneak a cigarette in the darkness.

  “You take Brenda home?” whispered Joe as Jackie walked toward him.

  “No, wasn’t time. She said she’d walk.” Jackie took the cigarette from the pack Joe offered him. “We’re gonna get married.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. We’ll take Dad’s car this weekend and drive to Maryland.”

  “But she’s only fifteen. She’s only in tenth grade!!”

  “And she’s only three months pregnant. And I want to marry her. I only waited before because she’s so young. But God, I need her, Joe. You don’t know how she makes me feel when she’s with me. You don’t know how she makes me feel when she’s not with me and I think about her. I love her, Joe. She’s gonna have my baby too. Christ, I’m gonna be a father! I’m gonna have a baby!”

  “Is that why you’re marrying her? I mean you aren’t just trying to convince yourself you love her because you got her pregnant?”

  “No. If I didn’t love her I wouldn’t have touched her. I could have gotten it from Sue if it was just that—but I wanted Brenda. You know that—or have I been talking to the walls for the last six months?”

  “No, you haven’t been talking to the walls. Do you want me to go along? As a witness or anything?”

  “How about as my best man?”

  “Can I go too?” Maddie whispered from the doorway, making the boys’ eyes widen. They were sure she had been sleeping.

  “Go? Where?” Jackie asked shakily as he quickly pulled her outside with them.

  “To Maryland. I can be your best girl,” she yawned.

  “No, Mouse. This is a secret. You have to keep this secret for me or I can’t marry Brenda. And you like Brenda, don’t ya?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then you can’t tell anyone until we get back on Sunday. Can you keep that secret for me?”

  Jackie never got to take his father’s car the next day. Sarah got a telephone call from Lew in the morning. Some boys had found Brenda hanging from the bottom of the bridge in the middle of the night. The authorities ruled it a suicide without investigation.

  Jackie, Johnny and Joe went to school the following Monday and stood in front of a gymnasium filled with students. Each received a football the team players had signed. They stood stone-faced, then moved back to their seats. No one associated the poor girl from the south side of town with Jackie Baker. So little was said about her death. No one in the gymnasium knew Jackie Baker was changing under the stony face he showed. No one in the gymnasium except his brother and best friend would know how he would break down that evening when he attended the girl’s viewing and how Joe and Johnny would have to hold onto him as he clutched onto the girl’s lifeless
body and sobbed, his strong athletic legs beyond the ability to hold his weight, or how surprised the few people attending the viewing were to see the three stars of their city’s high school football team attend her viewing.

  Only two people other than Jackie and Joe knew Jackie had promised to pick up Brenda for their trip south the next day before kissing her goodnight. Two other people knew of Jackie’s and Brenda’s plans to wed after they watched them together on the dike that night; after they listened to the young couple making their plans for a lifetime together. They were the same two people who watched Jackie walk toward his uncle’s house before they followed the girl into the shadows of an alley.

  CHAPTER IV

  JUNE 1984

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  June 1984

  Joe was putting a box of old mementoes away, the last of his belongings, when he heard the knock on his door. He glanced up at the clock to see it was almost nine-thirty. The sun had gone down, but it wasn’t quite dark yet, making his view of the woman standing outside his screen door somewhat impaired. Whomever she was, she looked business-like in her tailored skirt and blouse, with three inch heels and her hair pulled up on top of her head. His surprise stopped him when he was nearly three feet from the door, discovering it was Maddie.

  “You know how to open the door.” He turned back to the box on the other side of the room. She followed him, looking cool and sophisticated. He didn’t like it. “You come down to help me, Maddie? You know I always appreciate your help.”

  “I believe you have my son’s shirt down here.” She stopped ten feet away from him, ignoring his statement.

  “Do I?” He went back to sorting through the box. “Is that the only reason you came down here?”

  “That’s the only reason,” she said in a bored tone, but her interest picked up when she saw him lift a framed picture, making her walk to him and kneel next to the box. “Is this Jackie?”

  “You don’t know? Come now, a woman of such . . . .” He gestured toward her clothes and hair. “ . . . stature should be able to recognize her own brother.”

  “Fourteen years is a long time. Then this one must be you.” She pointed to the other soldier, showing Joe a well-manicured hand with lightly polished nails.

  “Now that really hurts,” Joe mocked her. This clean, crisp, tightly controlled woman was trying to keep the fiery, carefree, tomboy inside that he remembered so well.

  “You were much younger here. Excuse me for not remembering exactly what you looked like when I was a child. Could you get Robby’s shirt please. I’d like to go home.”

  “How’d you know his shirt was down here?” Joe got up and took a step toward the kitchen where the boy had left it.

  “Because I asked him who took his shirt off when I was spraying his back. He’s burnt quite nicely. Remind me to thank you.”

  “Well, maybe if you taught your kids to listen, he wouldn’t be burnt.”

  “My sons listen fine.”

  “Is that why they came down here today, when you told them not to?”

  “From what I heard, Robby sneaked off on his own. Jackie didn’t have any choice but to come down. As for Robby, I’ll deal with him when I get home.”

  “Are you going to punish him for coming to visit me? Don’t take your hang-ups out on the kid. He didn’t do any harm.”

  “I think I asked you for my son’s shirt.” She turned back to the box, glancing down at it and away from him.

  When Joe returned to the room he found her sitting in the chair, her hand holding a yellowed envelope with brown stains on it. In her other hand was a sheet of paper, faded a little with age, as was the childish script that covered it. Her eyes on the paper, she didn’t look up at him as he stood next to her. She carefully refolded the paper and slid it back into its envelope, handing it to him as she took the shirt.

  “I didn’t realize you kept things like this.” She pointed to the brown stains. “Is that . . . .”

  “Yeah. I haven’t seen it for a while.”

  “You were reading this when it happened?” She still kept her eyes downcast, looking at the envelope.

  “Right before. It was in my pocket when I found him. Somehow it fell out.”

  “I have to go home now. Thank you for getting the shirt.” She moved toward the front door, pausing before she went out. “Robby said he enjoyed helping you today. Thank you for letting him, and not being mean.”

  He watched her go, smiling a bit as he remembered he didn’t have much of a say in the matter. But his smile faded like the color of the aged envelope as he glanced down at the paper in his hand.

  JULY 1970

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  July 1970

  Dear Joe,

  I passed fifth grade this week. Bob graduated and spent two nights with us. Tom has a new job, he’s working at the silk mill as a mechanic. I can hardly wait until you, Jackie and John come home this summer. I miss you. Tell Jackie I miss him too. I’ll write him tomorrow. Tom’s dog died two weeks ago. She never did take to the new house since we moved in last year. Sometimes I can hear her bark to be left in. I miss her. I talk to your dad every day. He calls me his little indian. I tell him I’m German but he laughs at me. My dad is having a lot of trouble up at work. He says they are trying to make him quit so he doesn’t get his twenty-five year pension. He says he worked there for twenty-one years now. I don’t think I understand about the pension thing though. I have to go now. Bob said he’s going to take me to see the police school he’s going to go to soon. Did I tell you he’s gonna be a policeman? He’ll have a uniform just like you. Except his will be blue. Mom sends her love to you, so you tell Jackie I love him and want him to come home too.

  Love, Maddie.

  Twenty-one-year-old Joe McNier refolded the letter. He had read it four times already. He glanced over at Jackie Baker after reading Maddie’s reference to him in her letter. Somehow they had managed to be in the same unit, but John was separated from them, going into the Air Force instead.

  God, he wanted to go home. He had no right to be here. He was hot, sweaty, and scared half to death. His face itched unmercifully, either from the week’s growth of beard or the rash he’d been plagued with since fighting the persistent heat and humidity. He was sure he had faced weather such as this back home at times, but at least there he had the relief of a bath whenever he liked. He wasn’t sure which caused the incessant itching, but was positive he would never feel clean again in this lifetime.

  It was no different today than it had been for the past three months they had been in-country. They hadn’t seen any action for two weeks, and he was glad, more for Jackie’s sake than his. Jackie had been excessively careless ever since they arrived in Vietnam. But they had only one more lousy day in this hell hole before he and Jackie would be on their way out.

  Out of habit, his eyes scanned the lushness of t
he valley stretching out around them; the trees and foliage so thick in most spots he was sure the VC could be creeping over half the hillside and he’d never know it. Only the absence of gunfire and the fact that they were only a day from base camp assured him they were, for the most part, safe enough to actually sit and read their mail. He could almost hear the continuous rumble of truck engines going to and from the camp. He assumed it was only his intense desire to actually be there that fired his imagination, for other than the sounds of the jungle, there were only the soft conversations of various groups of men behind him.

  He glanced at Jackie again, who was working on his sixth reading of a letter from Tom. This time though a false laugh came from him.

  “Hey, Irish, guess what.”

  “What?” Joe pushed his helmet back on his head.

  “Remember Sue?” asked Jackie.

  “The cheerleader, yeah, I remember.”

  “Guess what happened to her. God, and they say ya don’t get paid back for your sins.”

  “What happened?” Joe didn’t like the look on his friend’s face.

  “She was in a car wreck. She was entertaining some guy when he ran into a tree. Can ya beat that? The steering wheel crushed her skull. Needless to say the poor jerk that was driving was killed too. God, I only wish her death would have been as long as she made Brenda’s.”

  It was the first time their suspicion had ever been spoken, making Joe look a little closer at him.

  “We don’t know she’s the one that killed Brenda,” Joe said quietly.

  Jackie just grunted, then became very quiet as he spoke. “Why couldn’t I have just left her alone? She’d be alive now if I could’ve left her alone.”

  “She loved you, Jackie.”

  “She’d be nineteen now. My baby would be three years old.”

  “I know.”

  “What the hell did she see in a goddamned jerk like me?”

  “You’re a good-lookin’ guy.” It wasn’t a compliment, just a fact.

  “Good-lookin’. It was my good looks that got me into that mess. Brenda would’ve been with me if I looked like a dog, I know she would’ve. But Sue, she wanted me as a Goddamn showpiece. What I wouldn’t do to have been ugly at eighteen. My looks be damned.” Joe didn’t like his tone. It was making the hair on the back of his neck stand erect but he couldn’t fully understand why. “Well, it looks like we’re gonna make it outta here,” Jackie continued. “We’ll be back to the real world in a month; that is if we don’t get some broad to give us head while we’re driving.” His sarcastic laugh escaped him.