Fat Lightning (8 page)

That's why I like to live right here. I know the rules here, 'cause they're the same ones Momma and Daddy had, and if anybody makes up any new ones, it's a-gonna be me. You live by my law here. That's what I ought to of told that Jeter boy, when I caught him.

CHAPTER TEN

Kim Stallings, who is on the Dabney High Class of '61 10-year reunion committee, tells Nancy that Buddy has sent in his $20.

“That's $20, Nance,” she says. “The cost is $20 a person. If you bring a date, it's an extra $20. Wonder if Buddy's bringing anyone? Well, you do the math.”

Sam isn't going. He'd just be bored, he tells her. She knows he's never been that close to any of her old friends.

Nancy goes with Sandy Hall Burden, her best friend from high school, and Sandy's husband, who was a year ahead of them. Sandy used to be known as Sandra, but when she went off to college at Old Dominion, she made everyone start calling her Sandy. Sandy's husband used to be known as Elbert, but he told everyone, as soon as he got out of high school, that he would be called Skip from then on. To Nancy's knowledge, no one had ever called him Skip before then. She still forgets sometimes. The three of them and Buddy used to double-date.

The reunion is the 22nd of June, a time of year when Richmond can feel hotter than Florida, the start of a season that will end sometime in late August and is best endured under a ceiling fan on a screened porch facing northeast. The Dabney High Class of '61 has rented a large conference room at the John Marshall Hotel downtown and hired a Carolinas beach music band. It is supposed to be the same band that played at their senior prom but turns out to be five other people, although some are related to the original members.

Skip rents a limousine, as a joke he claims, to pick them up at a quarter ‘til 6 and later take them home. Since the driver's paid by the hour, and they don't want to arrive until 6:30 at the earliest, they have him drive them around the city while they share a bottle of champagne. They stop off at a bar near the old tobacco warehouse district for a drink, the humidity down by the river almost knocking them back in the car when they get out.

The limousine drops them off right at the John Marshall's front doors, but Nancy breaks into a sweat under her full-length teal gown during the 10 seconds they're outside, and the sweat chills her instantly when she steps into the hotel's refrigerated lobby. She realizes that she's already drunk more in one sitting than at any time since she found out she was pregnant with Wade.

The room, half of an even larger one that's been divided by a sliding panel, is large enough for 300 graduates and their spouses, should they all choose to attend. Kim Stallings has already told Nancy that no more than half have paid their $20.

Nancy doesn't see Buddy when she comes in, trailing Sandy and Skip, who provide a shield from the hugs and kisses and you-haven't-changed-a-bits while she gets her bearings.

She's adjusted to the air conditioning now and briefly considers getting a Coke at the cash bar. Then she realizes how long it might be before she has another chance to get knee-walking drunk with so little guilt. Sam's keeping Wade; she's staying at Sandy and Skip's. She orders a bourbon-and-water.

Looking around her, she sees a group of people split down the middle by the '60s, which really didn't reach Richmond and the rest of the South until the decade was almost over. The men, in particular, are a study in contrast. She sees the Dabney High quarterback, wearing a three-piece suit, his hair in a crewcut identical to the one he wore to the senior prom, talking with the all-region halfback, who is wearing a pink and purple tank top and has a handlebar moustache and hair halfway down his back. Before the night is over, they'll fight in the parking lot.

The Class of '61, Nancy thinks to herself: too young to see what Viet Nam really was, too early for integration. Those who left the old values left them after high school and didn't seem to have much in common with their old friends anymore. She's not sure where she fits in.

There's a buffet line, and Nancy is halfway through it, sandwiched between two men who have put on enough weight and lost enough hair in a decade that she doesn't recognize them, when she sees Buddy. Whether he's been there all the time or just materialized, she doesn't know, but there he is, 30 feet in front of her, turned to the side so that she can see that he doesn't part his hair on the right any more.

She picks up a couple of chicken wings and does a 180-degree turn, not wanting to confront the past while carrying a plate full of finger food.

But, as she sits down at the emptier end of a long table, she feels a hand on her bare shoulder and knows it's him before he says, “Hey, sweet potato.”

She'd been his sweet potato and he'd been her sugar bear, a long time ago. It always embarrassed him when she'd call him that in public, but he always signed Christmas and birthday cards, “Your sugar bear.”

She swallows and just looks at him as he sits down beside her.

“You're parting your hair on the wrong side,” she finally says, and he laughs. He seems to have changed hardly at all. He's just as handsome to her as he was the day they got married, she realizes with a jolt. He hasn't lost the strong Irish lines on his face to fat or age, and he still wears his black hair straight back, the way she always liked it. Not that many people have faces worth showing off, she used to tell him. Don't hide your light.

Nancy has gained 10 pounds since the last time Buddy saw her, but she feels she has hidden it well. She still has the same ash-blond hair that they call “dirty blond” in Monacan, still has the soft, sleepy look that was known as bedroom eyes when she was in high school, still has a nice tan that hasn't started to crack and dry her skin.

They ask about each other's families, talk about and to old friends, dance around what they don't feel like talking about. Buddy's a foreman in the pressroom now, hardly even gets dirty any more, he tells Nancy, and they both remember the arguments they used to have about his neglecting to wash up before he came back to their little apartment. He's bought a townhouse in the Fan and is taking management courses at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Nancy shows him the latest picture of Wade, and Buddy says he looks just like her, which she knows isn't true.

They dance the old dances, the band alternating beach music with “Go Away, Little Girl,” and, late in the evening, “Moon River,” which reminds them both of beach weekends at his uncle's place at Sandbridge. Nancy is struck with how a smell stays with you. She recognized Buddy right away, of course, and she knew his touch. But it's the smell, some combination of skin and hair because Buddy never did use after-shave, that really rocks her. She is all too aware that whatever senses Sam stir in her are somewhat diminished by his being second.

“I see you haven't changed your name,” he says as they're dancing, and Nancy looks up in puzzlement, thinking he means her last one, but he makes a motion with his head toward Sandy and Skip dancing nearby, and she breaks up giggling, spilling her fourth bourbon-and-water on the back of Buddy's neck.

“No,” she says. “I change the last one enough, so I didn't think I ought to mess with the first one. How about you? Are you still a Buddy?”

“I'm still your Buddy,” he says, so low she's not sure she hears him correctly, and she lets it pass.

He says he's dating a woman, a reporter at the Times-Dispatch, but that it isn't serious. They argue a lot about politics and religion, and she wants him to have the tattoo on his arm removed.

“Tattoo?” Nancy says and breaks up again, spraying bourbon and water. “You were afraid to let them give you flu shots. Lemme see.”

She finally gets him to roll up his sleeve. Sure enough, just above his right elbow the tip end of what finally reveals itself as a snake appears. The snake is a now-faded green and dominates the upper half of his right arm. He got it, he says, at a place in Wrightstown, New Jersey, while he was waiting to go to the war. It seemed right at the time, he says, and shrugs.

Nancy is transfixed. She runs her hand along the surface of the tattoo, and she feels a rush of sorrow that an arm she once loved to stroke should be mutilated so.

“Momma and Daddy blamed you,” he says, and Nancy isn't sure he means for the tattoo, for his enlisting in the Army, or for their divorce. She doesn't want to ask.

Nancy and Buddy both mingle, Nancy wandering off while Buddy stays in one place and talks to whomever comes by. Nancy soon realizes that she's as predictable as one of her father's beagles on a trail, always circling back to Buddy. They'll talk for half an hour, then she'll wander off again, feeling old classmates' eyes on her.

Finally, after 1, Sandy and Skip are ready to go. Skip's called the limousine service again, and the four of them are standing there in the lobby, wobbling and laughing.

Skip invites Buddy to come over for a drink. Buddy looks at Nancy, who shrugs. They all stumble into the limousine. Skip and Sandy get in and slide over as far as they can. Buddy gets in before Nancy and, when she gets in, he slides her onto his lap. She feels warm and drowsy, and the whole experience reminds her of triple-dating in Buddy's father's Buick back in high school.

“God, I miss this,” she whispers in his ear. He turns her head slightly and kisses her, and she knows that she hasn't really been kissed in years. Even during sex, Sam often doesn't kiss her, and she hadn't noticed until now that she missed the feeling. She and Buddy used to kiss and pet for what seemed like hours in her parents' den when they were sophomores in high school, welded to each other, gluttons for each other's tongues and hands, before they went on to bigger things. She realizes that Buddy seems to be a couple of degrees warmer than Sam, and she remembers what a comfort his body used to be.

“Whoah, now,” Skip says. “You all going steady?”

“Fuck you, Elbert,” Buddy says as he comes up for air.

The two months that Nancy and Sam have lived in Monacan have been long ones for Nancy. She's started trying to write again, using a central character loosely based on Lot, although she's still so afraid of him that she only goes to the old house when she's sure there'll be a crowd there. But she thinks he's somewhat mystical, although Sam insists that all he is, is crazy.

Sam seems happy back in his hometown, although Nancy can't help but notice that they seldom see the old friends Sam's always romanticizing about. The ones who haven't moved away don't seem to be great visitors. So, they spend a lot of time with the Chastains. They have Sunday dinner with Sam's parents, who Nancy has finally been persuaded to call Carter and Marie.

In mid-June, Sam decides that he's going to dunk a basketball. Nancy is not a big basketball fan, but she sees this as peculiar on several fronts.

First, Sam's admitted to her that he never could dunk, that even in high school, he could barely get his hand above the rim. Second, as she gently reminds him, he's 32 years old. Third, as she doesn't remind him, he's carrying about 190 pounds on his six-foot frame. Twice a year, she has to take pants to the tailor's to get new hooks put in because Sam insists he's a 34 waist.

Sam has a friend, Bobby Thacker, who works at the YMCA back in Richmond, and he's the one who put the idea in Sam's head. They were talking about high school days and basketball one Sunday afternoon back in May, watching an NBA playoff game. In the second quarter, a black player, Sam didn't even notice which one, left the floor from somewhere around the free-throw line and seemed to sail along, bringing the ball over his head with a windmill motion, then slamming it through the basket with such force that it bounced well back into the seats behind the backboard.

“God, I'd kill to be able to do that,” Sam said. “I have dreams about being able to sail through the air and just slam the goddamn ball in the basket as I fly by.”

“It's not impossible,” Bobby told him, and he starts telling Sam about a training program that college basketball players use. Bobby can't actually dunk a basketball himself, it turns out, but he thinks he can train Sam to do it.

Bobby says he can set up a program in which Sam spends an hour on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays doing different kinds of hopping and jumping exercises, topped off with 10 100-yard dashes. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, he'll lift weights. Bobby's told him that he will have to be able to squat about twice his body weight in order to have the leg power to dunk a basketball, and Nancy's thinking that Sam had better lose a lot of weight.

Nancy thinks that her husband has forgotten all about Bobby's idea when, one Monday morning in June, she wakes up at 7 to find Sam already gone. He comes back while she's fixing breakfast, drenched with sweat. He tells her that he's decided he's going to dunk a basketball. Nancy tries to be encouraging, although she remembers that Sam did ask her the week before if she was writing another homing novel.

Nancy thinks about how Sam looks when he comes in from these morning workouts, and how he doesn't even change his workout clothes before sitting down to breakfast, a drop of sweat sometimes falling off his brow into his eggs, and she wonders if she wasn't a little too hard on Buddy's personal hygiene in their married days. Maybe, she thinks, it's just men.

Buddy helps her out of Sandy and Skip's car and into the house. She realizes she's more drunk than she's been in years, and she hopes she won't get sick. Sandy offers to make coffee, but before she can return from the kitchen with it, Buddy has taken Nancy in his arms and carried her to the guest bedroom.

Nancy's offering little resistance, but when he lays her down on the double bed, she says, “I can't do this, Buddy.”

“Why can't you do this?” he asks her. “You've done it before.”