April North

6

April focused her eyes upon the small leather-bound hymnal and sang the words to the song in a small clear voice. She did not really have to study the words, since the congregation sang God Bless America each Sunday in an effort to prove that a theory holding Protestant churches to be a hotbed of communism was markedly untrue as far as Antrim, Ohio, was concerned. Still, by looking at the hymnal she could avoid looking elsewhere. Elsewhere took in a lot of ground. Elsewhere included the minister, and April North was young enough to have trouble looking steadily and soberly upon the steady and sober countenance of a minister of God just a few hours after a night of scintillating sin. That the minister would have approved of April’s conduct was highly doubtful. And, although she hardly suspected that he could guess her conduct from the expression on her face, she preferred not to look at him.

Elsewhere also included Bill Piersall a few pews forward, Danny Duncan a little to her left, and Jim Bregger across the aisle on her right. She seemed to be surrounded by boys who either had gotten into her or who had tried. Bill, for one, qualified on both counts-he had taken his pleasure with her in the woods and he was ready for more.

She did not want to look at them.

God bless everything, she thought. She closed her hymnal and returned it to the rack where it belonged. She turned to kiss her mother and her father in turn, then followed them all out of the church. Sunday, she thought, should be abolished. What a God-awful way to spend a morning.

She had never objected to church before. Previously she had even looked forward to it. It was uplifting, in a way, and after a morning spent sitting primly in a clean dress between her parents in the small church she had generally felt a great deal better. But the time she had spent with Craig had changed her feelings on the subject. Craig was almost violently anti-religious, and after being with him she felt the same way.

She remembered an incident from the night before at his house. They were in bed together at the conclusion of their second bout of lovemaking — her “lesson” — and he looked at her suddenly and said, “You can go to hell now.”

She didn’t get it at first. She stared at him, thinking that he was telling her to get out and never darken his doorway again, and she wondered what she had done wrong. But he explained soon enough.

“You can go to hell,” he repeated. “You’ve committed a cardinal sin and you can burn eternally as punishment for it. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“What?”

“You’ve slept with a man without being married to him. You’ve parted your lily-white thighs without benefit of clergy. This makes you a sinner, April dear.”

“I don’t feel like a sinner.”

“You don’t look like a sinner. Even with your pretty nipples pointing at the ceiling, you somehow don’t resemble the popular stereotype of the sinner. Do you feel sinful, April?”

“Not just now,” she joked. “Give me a minute to catch my breath, Craig.”

“Do you know what the only sin is?”

“What?”

“Self-denial,” he said solemnly. “That’s the only sin in the world.”

She closed her eyes briefly. Craig was right, she thought. He was living a good life, a life better by far than that of the sanctimonious hypocrites who cluttered up the world. You only live once, and the value of your life could be measured by the amount of pleasure you received in the course of that one lifetime of yours.

Suppose I had stayed a virgin, she thought. And suppose I was walking along the road and a car hit me. And killed me. And suppose I died a virgin—

She opened her eyes. Bill Piersall was standing in front of her, a determined look in his eyes, his hands planted firmly on his hips. He was wearing a dark blue suit. It was the only suit he owned, and he wore it once a week, to church and once or twice a year to a formal dance — these were the only times he wore a suit.

“I have to talk to you, April.”

She wondered how many suits Craig owned. At least a dozen, she decided. And a dozen sports jackets and a dozen pairs of shoes, and he probably paid as much for his underwear as William Piersall paid for his whole precious blue suit.

“You can’t keep on giving me the cold shoulder like this, April. It’s not right.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“April—”

“You don’t seem to understand,” she said haughtily. “I do not like you. I do not care for your company. You bore me and annoy me.”

He drew a breath. “I know what it is,” he said.

“Do you?”

“I was reading,” he said. “In a book.”

“I didn’t know you could read.”

He went on doggedly while she wished he would simply give up and go away. But he would not. “I read about it,” he said. “About what happens with a girl like you. You see, you’re a good girl. Deep inside you’re a good girl.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“And you’re not cheap,” he pushed on. “So what you and I did, it made you feel all guilty. You get it? And you make up for this feeling guilty by taking it out on me. You don’t want to blame yourself, so you blame me.”

“You ought to be a psychiatrist.”

He missed the sarcasm. “I read it,” he said. “In a book.”

“That’s the best place to read things.”

“They have stuff like it in newspapers, but the books are better. I could lend you the book if you want. You could read about it and know it better.”

She yawned.

“What I want to tell you,” he went on, “is I respect you.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“And I’m not just after you on account of sex or anything. I wouldn’t even want to do it with you any more. I just want to be your friend.”

She laughed now. She laughed in his face, imagining how Craig would roar when she told him about it. I just want to be your friend. It was too much.

“Can we be friends, April?”

“Distant friends.”

“I’ll keep my distance, April. I mean it. I just want us to go out on dates and things, and go for rides, and maybe have cokes together and talk—”

“Distant friends,” she repeated. “Miles apart. In order to keep our relationship pure. I think we should see each other rarely. Otherwise our bodies will pull us together.”

“Sure. I mean—”

“We’ll see each other once a year,” she said. “At Christmas time. We’ll shake hands solemnly and go our separate ways. That way we won’t run into danger of fleshly sins. That way our love will be a pure love, William.”

He scratched his head. “You talk funny,” he said.

“I talk English.”

“Maybe. But not like everybody else.”

“That’s because I’m not like everybody else,” she said. “And thank God for that.”

“Look, April.” He cleared his throat. “Listen—”

“Go to hell.”

He stared at her.

“Drive there,” she said, “in your silly rod. Have a flat tire in hell so you can’t get back. Just leave me alone, Bill. I don’t like you.”

Her parents were a short distance away, hearing nothing but waiting for her to join them. She did and they headed homeward.

“Whom were you talking to?” her mother asked.

“Bill Piersall.”

“A friend of yours?”

“He thinks so,” she said. “I don’t like him.”

“He’s a sharp guy,” Link said. “You ever ride in that car of his?”

She shook her head.

“It’s great, April. You know, he built the whole thing himself. Set himself up with a tool shop in the garage and worked it all up. He bought the Model A for about fifty dollars, and he picked up a Chrysler engine, and hammered the body into shape and made a million changes to hop the car up, and it’s a real bomb. Bill can outdrag anything else around.”

She smiled softly. “What did you think of Craig’s car?”

“The Benz?”

She nodded.

“Well,” her brother said, “that’s different.”

“You like it?”

“It’s the best car I ever saw,” he said. His eyes were saucer-sized. “A 300-SL, for God’s sake.”

“Link—”

Link looked at his mother. “Sorry,” he said. “For gosh sake, I mean. That’s what I meant.”

“That’s better.”

“But it’s some car,” he told April. “Craig a good driver?”

“The best.”

“He’d have to be, with a car like that. Uh — you think I could ever get a ride with him?”

“Sure,” she said.

“You mean it?”

“I mean it.” In a whisper she added, “He might even let you drive.”

“I can’t get a license for a year.”

“That’s all right.”

“You mean it, April?”

She nodded, smiling. They all loved Craig, she thought. They all were just about ready to worship at his feet.

And she loved him, too.

Monday morning meant school. Monday morning meant getting out of bed far too early, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, taking a fast shower and leaving the tub not quite awake, going down for breakfast and eating in a fog, drinking coffee, and plodding out of the door with a book under her arm.

Monday morning meant her home room, six rows of five desks each, a teacher in front and twenty-nine students around her. Kids who seemed years younger than herself, after being with Craig, after feeling like a mature woman.

Monday morning meant English first period, when she volunteered a comment on Hamlet that would never have occurred to her before she met Craig. She had always been a good student. But now she was more perceptive, able to think more deeply and to form her thoughts more coherently. Her teacher, a gray-haired, washed-out woman who had long ago given up any possible hope that any Antrim High student would someday say something intelligent, was patently amazed. And pleased.

“That’s a very interesting comment, April,” she said. “Did you come across the idea in your reading?”

“No, Miss Banner. It just came to me.”

“You thought of it yourself?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that’s very fine, April.”

Monday morning meant a study hall. The study hall was another classroom, five desks in a row, six rows of desks, with a spectacled teacher at the large desk in the front. In theory, at least, the study hall was a place for studying. This rarely happened. The study hall was a gossip arena, a place to make dates and spread news.

April was uncomfortable. She saw the way eyes followed her as she walked through the door and up an aisle to her desk. She heard buzzing, and she knew at once that they were buzzing about her. She wondered what they were saying. Telling each other she wasn’t a virgin, she guessed. Telling that she was an easy make, and telling that she was dumb enough to brush off a big man like Bill Piersall, and wondering whom she was laying now.

Well, to hell with them. She did not care what they thought or what they said in whispers. They were children — she was a woman. Their words and thoughts did not concern her.

That was Monday morning. There were two more classes, a math ordeal and a Spanish class, but they were uninterestingly routine.

Monday morning gave way to Monday noon. April walked to her locker, opened it, took out her paper bag of lunch. She carried it up several flights of stairs to the school cafeteria on the top floor, went through the line to get a cup of black coffee and carried everything to a table near the window.

Before, she used to eat lunch with a group of girls. Her friends, she thought bitterly. She had never been close to any single one of them in particular. But they were her friends, the girls she talked to, the girls who talked to her.

They were not talking to her now.

Now she was a pariah, a non-virgin, a girl who had done IT and who seemed to like it. She was, in short, a girl with a reputation, and at Antrim High a reputation was something on the order of a venereal disease. A good girl — one without a reputation — could not chance a conversation with a bad girl — as though the reputation might be contagious, and could rub off on the good girl and make a bad girl out of her.

So April ate alone.

She did not mind. Actually, she thought, she was pleased to get away from that clutch of gabbing poultry. They were children, they were foolish and shallow and they belonged in a tiny and stupid town like Antrim. She had nothing to say to them and they had nothing to say to her, and she was glad to avoid them.

And the view from the window was preferable to the noise that she would be subjected to at the girls’ table. This was much better, she told herself. She gnawed at a peanut-butter sandwich, sipped her coffee and relaxed.

But not all the girls ignored her. While she was finishing her coffee, she saw a diminutive blonde cross the cafeteria floor toward her table. The girl was Judy Liverpool and all at once April remembered how she had used Judy as an excuse that time when Craig had first picked her up. She wondered if her mother mentioned something to Mrs. Liverpool. That could mess things up, she thought. That could ruin everything, after she had managed to tie all the loose ends together so prettily.

“Hi, April.” Judy was smiling shyly.

“Hi,” April said. “Have a seat.”

The little blonde hesitated only a moment. Then she sat down, looked at April, looked away, and finally looked at April again, her lips trembling.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Judy said.

“Go ahead.”

“I — people have been saying things, April.”

“And you want to know if they’re true?”

“No, that’s not it at all.”

April smiled. Judy was nervous and April was sorry she had snapped at her. Judy had always been a sweet kid, not at all bitchy as the other girls were inclined to be. Judy was serious and dreamy.

“What’s the matter Judy?”

“I... oh, I don’t know.”

“You can tell me.”

Judy’s eyes were very wide now. “I want to know what it’s like,” she said. “That’s all.”

“What it’s like?” April asked.

The words came in a rush. “Oh, God, April. They all say terrible things about you, make jokes and call you names and everything, but I think they’re just jealous. You know so much now. You... you did it, you see, and we haven’t, and I don’t know about them, I mean I can only guess, but I know about me. And I want to know what it’s like, April. To be a woman, to have a boy do it to you, to feel it, to—”

She covered Judy’s small hand with her own. “Take it easy,” she said soothingly. “Relax.”

“Does it hurt?”

“A little. The first time.”

“Does it — feel good?”

“There’s nothing like it.”

“Really good?”

“Perfect.”

“Do you — how many times do you do it?”

“That depends.”

“Sure. I mean — April?”

“Yes?”

“Doesn’t it make you feel bad?”

“It makes me feel wonderful.”

“Don’t you think it’s wrong?”

“No.” She remembered what Craig had told her. “There’s only one sin,” she told Judy. “Self-denial.”

Judy thought, nodded. “But your reputation,” she said at once. “Don’t you worry about it, April?”

“No.”

“Don’t you care what people think? What they say about you? How they look at you when you’re walking down the street?”

“I don’t care, Judy.”

“Really?”

“Really. I just care about what I think is right.”

As she watched Judy walk back to her table, April finished her coffee, set the cup down and smiled broadly. They talked about her, of course. They called her names and snickered behind her back.

But they also envied her.

She knew something they did not know, something they could not know until they had done what she had done. And they envied her this knowledge, envied her so deeply that one of them had needed to ask her what it was all about.

Let them talk about her, then. Because she was way ahead of them.

She was glad when school was over for the day. She went to her locker, put on her jacket, gathered up the books she would need that night. She tucked the books under one arm and walked out. It was a good day-fresh air, a crisp breeze, a clear sky. She filled her lungs with the smell of burning leaves, fresh autumn leaves raked and burned at the curbs, the particular smell of the season.

Bill Piersall was waiting for her.

“You don’t seem to understand,” she told him before he could utter a word. “I don’t like you, I don’t want to talk to you and you’re just making things difficult for me. Why don’t you get out of my life?”

“I want to give you a ride, April.”

“I don’t want one.”

He managed to smile. It was hard for him and this pleased her. Evidently he was really pretty crushed — probably he had never had a girl give him the air quite so coolly before and it was a new experience for him. Well, fine. Let him crawl around on his hands and knees. She would push his face in the dirt and laugh like a hyena.

“You’re going home now,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“Probably.”

“Well, why walk?”

“It’s good exercise.”

“Listen,” he said. “I won’t even talk to you if you don’t want me to.”

“That’s a fine idea.”

“I mean, in the car. I won’t talk to you, I won’t touch you, I won’t do anything but drive you straight home. Don’t you get it, April? I just want to be friends. I want to take you home — that’s all. I swear it.”

She sighed.

“How about it, April?”

His car was parked at the curb. She looked at the souped-up hot-rod and curled her lip in disdain. “I wouldn’t ride in that bucket of bolts,” she said. “Not even if I liked the driver.”

“It’s a good car, April.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It may not be much for looks,” he said, “but it’s what’s under the hood that counts. I put plenty into that car, April. I did every bit of the work myself. I took the shell of an old Ford and made a car out of it, and you ought to feel how it runs. It’s a peach.”

“That’s nice.”

He forced another smile. “Just let me run you over to your house,” he said. “Believe me, April, you’ll never get a ride in a better car.”

The timing could not have been more perfect. Just as he was saying this, hands on hips and smile on lips, April heard a roar, a most familiar roar, as a car took a corner two blocks away. She looked up and Bill looked up, and they saw Craig’s Mercedes, sleek and lovely, burning up the street at a speed way over the legal limit. Craig dropped the car down into second, hit the brakes, and the Mercedes pulled up at the curb.

Bill was staring at it.

“Bill,” she said, “I guess I’ll never get a ride in a better car, will I?”

Then she told him what he could do with his camshaft. She wasn’t too clear on what a camshaft was, but she guessed that one shaft was as good as the next for what she had in mind. She turned away from him, wanting to race to Craig, but controlling herself, playing the scene for all it was worth.

She walked like a queen to the Mercedes. Craig leaned across to open the door for her, and she stepped in regally, seating herself in the snug bucket seat, fastening the belt around her middle. She leaned over to kiss Craig quickly on the cheek, then turned around slightly just as Craig dropped the Mercedes into first and put the accelerator on the floor.

She would not have traded the expression on Bill’s face for anything in the world.