From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Series"- Valentines Can’t Buy Her, Can They?

Valentines Can’t Buy Her, Can They?

 

Who knows when the endless walks started? Peter Paul’s endless walks. Maybe it was something as simple as not having, really his parents not having, a car, a reliable car in the 1950s golden age of the automobile, the American automobile fin-tail night. All such Markin vehicles, when there was motor transportation around, and in the early days he had memory-think of his father traipsing out of the house, lunch bucket in hand, to catch, although usually to wait to catch, the first morning public square bus more often than not, always looked like some Joad- mobile breaking down on some Route 66 (really Route 6 but Route 66 spoke of great American West night adventures) dust blow-out road waiting on some stranger’s kindnesses to send Tom into some godforsaken Western plains town for water , battery, or some spare part. Yes, now that he thought about it Peter thought it was just like the Joad’s clunker except for the no family heirlooms hanging from the rafters.

 

Names like Studebaker, Nash Rambler, and Plymouth (not the new, sexy tail-fin ones but some box thing that grinded along sputtering to the high heavens and smelling of oils, grease and always, always some foul unnamed smell that only went away when the car was properly fixed).  And see too Peter had a no driving mother, a no car-driving mother when there was a car around. No Mom to take him here and there, or for just goofing around looking for some new view of the world. All such new views depended on the clunker, and his father’s ability to keep it on the road while a carping wife and three screaming boys in the backseat tried his patience more than any Daytona 500 driver ever had to face.

 

So mishmash memories of endless waits for early morning, not as early as his father but early, because there was no midday transport, and late afternoon public buses filled his heart with terror. Terror that he would always be stuck in “the projects” waiting on some late-arriving or just barely arriving Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway bus (always called just the bus, except when he wanted to curse, or what he later learned was a curse and paid in penance for the knowledge, when yet again it arrived too late for him to easily do whatever mission he was intent on doing). At times like that Peter Paul  always thought about the time when  he (and his brother, John James) were to make their first communion at five and six years old (Roman Catholic- style in case there are differences in the way it is done in other kinds of heathen churches, heathen then anyway) and clad in all white. Mom dressed as well as he ever remembered seeing her and Dad as well, although he always seemed ill at ease in fancy dress, had to wait an eternity for the bus and barely, just barely made it to the church. Then they waited for an eternity, maybe more, for the bus afterwards into order to go have an out-of-the-house breakfast to celebrate this latest Christian victory.

 

So he started walking, walking that endless walk.        

 

Peter Paul established a certain fixed route to his walks not so much because he was enthralled by the idea of an established route, or because he had some idea even that it was fixed as much as “the projects”, which were located on an isolated old-time farm land peninsula near the bay, had only one road out (one asphalt-covered road, rutted even then, although later he would “discover” shortcuts through marshes and reeds, some of them Mother hair-raising, if she had known). And also because he feared, feared to perdition, that if he varied his route he would get lost, the cops would have to bring him home, and that would be the end of his endless walking since his walking was a motherless thing.  

 

See there was a certain practical necessity to Peter’s stealth as well because the mothers, even if just raggedy projects mothers, had some kind of unexplained and unexpected league of mothers-“projects” divisions pledge, that they would raise a hue and cry if one of the kids seemed to be wandering too far from home. So the first part of the journey was always sneaking out the back door down the hill to the shoreline and around the bend about half a mile to reach that lonely road out. Along the way out he passed seemingly endless seawall-flanked sea streets, all granite slabs, leftovers from local granite quarries that gave the town its granite-etched, granite-sweated, granite city nickname. From there he could see shoreline-flashing rocks, wave broken shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells to the right, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat to the left as he slip-shot his way to the main road to the town center (but what did he know then of fetid and mephitic they just stank, stank to high heaven in low tide time).

 

Most days, most trips, he didn’t care how long it took as long as he was back by lunch, or supper depending on the time of day of his getaway. Today though, this day that forms the basis of the story that  he told Billy Bradley one summer night after it was long over, and he had “forgotten” the incident until something, actually someone, made him think about it this old route was making hard the way, the path, okay, to uptown drug stores. See added in was a little rain, the tide was up, and he was running a little late. But he had to get his uptown business (that’s what he called it, what he always called it with a little smirk) done because his tomorrow was an important day. Although when he told Billy the occasion day Billy yawned and wondered why all of a sudden that year of our lord 1956 it was urgent business.

 

Now the layout of Adamsville’s uptown, like a lot of towns, was a couple of streets of retail stores, a couple of places to eat, a few professional buildings, a movie theater (or two, depending on the town) some government buildings and so on. In short, boring. Except this day all Peter Paul’s focus was on the largest drugstore in town (and for a long time the only one), Rexall’s Drugstore. Why? Don’t laugh, or laugh just a little. Peter Paul, sweating a little from his exertions even on this raw winter day, needed, desperately needed, to get some Valentine’s Day cards. Yah, I know I started to yawn too.      

 

See all of a sudden this winter Peter Paul started noticing girls in his fifth grade class, and started kind of find them interesting, kind of. Kind of except when they started giggling, collectively giggling, about nothing at all or started to tease him. Tease him not in a mean way like they did the previous year, fourth grade year, because he came from the projects, and he didn’t have a father car, and he walked everywhere but blush tease him be because well because, they found him kind of interesting, kind of.  And that kind of interesting them and that kind of interesting him were on a collision course.

         

Like a lot of guys, young guys and old, when girls (young women and just regular plain old women, okay) are in play, Peter Paul went overboard. Went overboard for just that reason that guys have been going overboard since about Adam and Eve, hell maybe before, because some frail (Markin’s old neighborhood term coined by the local corner boy king Billie Bradley to denote, the, uh, fairer sex) looked in his direction for about five seconds and he looked back. See, he “promised” about five of these used-to-be-giggling and mean girls, that they would be his valentine. Exclusively, one and only, true blue, whatever. He explained to me how it happened but I don’t want you to yawn any more than you have to so I will just skip that part. Hey, you already know from your own going overboard, or your own peeking what happens when the blood is up so just use that as a frame of reference. Besides, as he laid the thing out, it sounded (and still sounds) goofy since some of the girls knew each other and some, I think he said, already had “boyfriends” or what passed for boy friends in fifth grade. Kid’s stuff, yes, strictly kid’s stuff. So he had to hightail it up to Rexall’s with no money really and try to work his “magic.”

 

And he did. Sending (or presenting in person) each a Rexall’s Drug Store, heist-stolen (the “clip” to use the term of art then in use in the Adamsville projects requiring quick hands, darting eyes and some version of nerves of steel) valentine, ribbon and bow valentine (hey Hallmark said the very best , or use to) good night. Signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, stating that, get this, if only she, five candidates she remember, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head (and endless sorrow-and delight), sticks all (another term of projects boyish art to indicate young womanhood), no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would only give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute sea street washed Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet. Jesus, classic Markin.