Deceptions

          This is part of a longer work, tentatively titled Deceptions, about a young man who can't seem to do anything right. He finally ends up in the service, and his life takes on a new direction; however, he can't seem to escape the troubles he left behind. Hope you enjoy it.
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Sally Mae captured the attention of Serpentville High School like no other girl had ever done before and since. At thirteen, she walked into Mr. Jogneaux's ninth grade homeroom with the confidence and assurance her beauty afforded her. At fifteen, she had already developed beyond her years. Her breasts strained against the white, ruffled blouses she loved to wear tucked into her skirts. Her small waist gracefully gave way to her rounded, full hips. She had long slender legs, still a little bony where they showed but not bad looking. If not for her face, which glowed a healthy pink under her freckles, her clear, green eyes, which turned almost yellow when she was angry, and her thick orange-red hair, which hung partway down her back, she might have passed for four or five years older. There was no denying she had a fifteen-year-old face and an eighteen-year-old body.

Sally Mae always held herself erect when she walked or sat, and she spoke softly, correctly, with a honeysuckle-sweet southern accent. I wanted to know her better, but I was too proud to stand at the end of the lengthy line of admirers trying to get her attention—she had offers for dates from most of the seniors, members of the track team, the baseball team, and the basketball team, except for Grant Guillory who was practically married to Lois Smith. She dated selectively, always careful of her reputation. She avoided places that served alcohol or boys who had wild or shady reputations; She was a member of the Christian Students for Decency in School club. There were other good-looking girls at Serpentville High School, but none of them could compare with Sally Mae. She was easily the most beautiful, the most desirable.

I hated her.

I hated her because I was not in her league and never would be. I was not an athlete. I was not particularly handsome, big ears, shaggy black hair, a stick-skinny frame, and I was a bookworm. I was boring, with a capital B. Sally Mae liked parties, horse riding, and excitement, and although I liked parties, I sucked at socializing, and horses scared me. I also liked the wrong music. While the other students listened to the Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Stones, or The Strawberry Alarm Clock, I preferred Percy Sledge, Joe Tex, Otis Redding, and the more bluesy tunes of B.B. King, Taj Mahal, and John Lee Hooker. I didn't fit in Sally Mae's circle of friends.

During our senior year, while we waited to graduate high school, Sally Mae stood off to the side of the crowd of students, alone and apparently absorbed in contemplation. I screwed up my courage and decided to talk to her.

"Thinking about what you're going to do after graduation?"

She looked up at me, her green eyes questioning.

"Oh, hi Junior. I was thinking about maybe going to college, but I don't know which one. What are you going to do after school?"

"I'll probably join the service." I didn't mention that college was not an option for me. Although I had the grades, I did not have the money. My mother was on welfare, and she could not afford to help me. I figured I'd devote a couple of years to Uncle Sam and come out with the GI Bill, which would pay my college.

"Vietnam?"

"No, I don't want to go there. I'll probably join the Air Force or the Navy."

"That's smart. What about after the service? What are you going to do then?"

"I'll probably go to college."

"That's good." She paused and searched my face with her green eyes. "Why don't you like me, Junior?"

The question caught me off guard.

"I…I like you all right. It's just…"

Just then Gary Courville, the school's track star grabbed her hand and led her away.

***

I didn't join up after graduation like I told Sally Mae. Instead, I sat around the house, read books, and occasionally visited Joe's Saloon to play a little pool. After about a week of that, my mother grabbed the book I read, placed it on the table, and sat across from me.

"If you expect to stay in this house," she said, "you'll have to pay your way. I expect you to get a job and help me with the rent and groceries." My father died when I was seven, and my mother turned to alcohol to relieve the misery of poverty and welfare to sustain her drinking. Since I was no longer in school, the welfare checks were going to shrink.

"Your Uncle Ham would have offered to help me with the rent and groceries," she continued.

I groaned. Uncle Ham was my mother's brother, champion of the navy, veteran of World War II, wearer of size twelve shoes. Whenever my mother was angry with me, she used Uncle Ham as a measuring stick. "You ought to be more like your Uncle Ham, Junior. He was a good boy. He never left his bed unmade. He knew how to make a bed." If she was especially drunk or vindictive, she resorted to comparing me to my father. "You're just like your daddy, Junior, lazy and no good. He stayed home and share-cropped that two-bit farm of his, while brave young men like your Uncle Ham went off to fight the Japs."

Uncle Ham's shoes were difficult to fill. Sometimes I wished he hadn't died off the coast of Okinawa like he did. I really would like to have had a talk with him.

"Okay, Momma," I said. "I'll find a job."

***

I met Philip Brashear in a bar in Ellisonville, one rainy afternoon. He said he needed a boy to work with him at Coco Construction, and since I had no money, and my mother was about to kick me out of her house, I agreed to meet him at the head office at four the next morning.

"I don't have a car," I told him, hoping that it wasn't a deal breaker.

"Where do you live?"

I explained, and he said that since it was on his way, he'd pick me up at 3:30 a.m. I groaned my agreement.

"What should I wear?"

"Wear something you're not too attached too. Wear something cool, but make sure it has long sleeves. Bring gloves and a good wide straw hat."

"What exactly does Coco construct, Philip?"

He grinned, revealing a row of tobacco-stained teeth.

"We construct board roads."

"What is that?"

"You'll see," he said and bought me a beer.

***

Coco Construction serviced the oilfields, building, servicing, and tearing up board roads that led to oilrigs and wellheads situated in pastures, swamps, and marshes. The roads were constructed of two-inch by six-inch by ten-foot boards laid across each other and held in place with sixteen-penny nails. Sometimes, the roads were single layered, if the ground under them was high and dry. Sometimes, they could have as many as five or six layers if the ground was especially soft and wet. Laying a board road was back breaking work—driving sixteen-penny nails with a special sledgehammer all day, hauling and stacking mud-encrusted boards through several inches of mud, prying up boards held together with rusty nails, mud, and months of heavy traffic. In the summer, it was hot, mosquito-slapping work. A boardroader always had to be on the lookout for snakes, scorpions, spiders, or thousands of other bugs and critters that lived under the boards. In the winter, it was cold, teeth-chattering work. Too much clothes and a worker couldn't move comfortably. Too little clothes and he froze. I soon learned that laying the road was not for me. I had been there less than a month before I started looking for an easier job to do.

There were five duties when laying a board road. Two of them I did not qualify for—supervisor and truck driver for the eighteen-wheelers that hauled off the bundles. The rest of the jobs, I felt I could handle—boardroading, which involved laying, servicing, or tearing up the roads, swampy, which involved slinging a wire cable around the bundles and securing it, and winch truck operator, which involved positioning the truck, and working the winch. I started helping the swampy, a short little guy who smoked roll-your-owns, every chance I could. At first, Shorty was a little suspicious of my attentions, but he was slow and lazy and soon started relying on me for help. When he fell sick, I was the natural replacement. By the time he returned, I was firmly entrenched at swampy. I was faster and smarter than Shorty. Philip had no choice. He told him that he needed to return to boardroading or quit.

He quit.

Swampy was much easier, but I still got my feet muddy, so I started hanging around the winch truck driver as much as possible. Soon, he was letting me position the truck and work the winch—I could do both and still do my job as swampy. After a while, he allowed me to load the eighteen-wheelers. I learned everything he did, and when he took sick, I moved into his job, but Jeff was not Shorty. He had been with the company for years, and he knew people in the front office, so when he returned, I went back to my duties as swampy. During my third month with Coco Construction, Jeff developed cancer and never returned, and Phillip made me winch truck operator.

I didn't get my feet muddy anymore, but I lost my job with Coco Construction.

We were pulling up a road near a wellhead, a set of pipes, valves, and gauges sticking out of the ground and under a tremendous amount of pressure. Another team worked on laying a road about two or three football fields away. I was busy hauling bundles and stacking them up on an eighteen-wheeler. Philip called me over and told me to pick up a bundle and take it to the other team. The bundle was heavy, the boards covered with a sticky, clay mud. As I winched it up, the front wheels of the truck lifted slightly off the ground, about two or three inches. I looked over at Phil, but he said nothing. I put the truck in gear, and again, the wheels left the ground. Phil waved me forward, so I didn't worry about it. I drove slowly and carefully, but the front kept bouncing up and leaving the ground a few inches. My route took me about twenty-five feet from the wellhead. When I hit a slight incline, the front end of the truck lifted straight up into the air. I was sure the truck would flip over, so I opened the door and jumped out.

Only, the truck did not flip over.

When the bundle touched the ground, the front of the truck came back down, and since it was still in gear, kept on going toward the wellhead. I could hear Phil yelling at me, but my head was still spinning, and I couldn't make out what he was saying. I turned around, noticed him running toward me, waving his arms and yelling.

"I'm okay," I said, when he was close enough to hear.

"You stupid shit," he yelled at me and knocked me on the back of the head. "It's moving toward a wellhead."

Sometimes, it takes a knock on the head to make a person see clearly. When Phil hit me, I realized at once what I had to do. I ran as fast as I could, away from that truck. I hadn't gone very far when I heard grinding and then an explosion, which knocked Phil on his face and me on top of him. He threw me off and hit me four times on the head before finally standing and dragging me away from the fire. When I could see again, the winch truck lay on its back, all four tires spinning and burning. Flames shot out of the ground a hundred feet in the air where the wellhead used to be. The heat was almost unbearable.

Phil grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

"Damn it. Didn't you know that these trucks never flip? Didn't you know that?" I wanted to answer him, point out that the truck was lying on the ground with four wheels up in the air, but something in his eyes stopped me. "Go on. Get out of here."

I started walking. I was fifty miles from home, but there was no way I was going to ask Phil for a ride back, so I thumbed my way home.

***

When I finally arrived home from my work disaster, my mother handed me a letter from Uncle Sam informing me that I had passed my physical and I was classified 1A.

Sometime during the first few weeks with Coco, I received a letter from Uncle Sam, demanding that I go to New Orleans for a physical. I spent a night roaming around Bourbon Street, spending my meager Coco Construction pay on beer and women. The next day, I stood in lines as doctors probed and poked me. Then the government placed me on a bus and sent me home

"They going to draft you?" my mother asked.

"Yes." I threw the letter in the trash. She pulled it out.

"They put you in jail for doing things like that."

"Isn't jail a damn sight better than dying in Vietnam somewhere like Jimmy Durio?" Jimmy was the only person from Serpentville to die in Vietnam. Young people used his name to point out what could happen. The older people used him as an example of the ultimate sacrifice. My opinion was that Jimmy would prefer being alive than an example of anything.

"He died for his country like your Uncle Ham. You could learn something from them." She placed the letter on the table in front of me and walked off.

"What? I could learn how to die?" However, she wasn't listening.

The next morning, I heard knocking on the front door at three thirty. It was Phil, and he wanted me to go with him. I didn't want to, but I was afraid that he would cause a raucous, and I didn't want my mother to know, just yet, what had happened, so I told him to give me a couple of minutes to get my clothes on, and we drove to the central office. He did not say a word to me all the way. When we arrived, he told me to go see the big boss and headed toward the workshop. I knew I was in trouble because Sonny Whitmore never fooled around with the likes of me, unless it was very serious. I knocked on the door.

"Come in."

Whitmore sat at his big ebony desk and glared at me from behind a huge cigar. He took it out and waved it at me.

"You sure fucked things up royally, Fontenot."

"Yes sir," I looked around the office for some place to sit, but there was none. "I thought I was going to flip over."

"What I should do is stick your butt in jail," he threatened, but I knew he couldn't do anything to me like that. I had been working for him, and it was an accident. "But I'm not going to. I'm going to make you work for every penny you cost this company." I wasn't too sure about that. Maybe he could.

"Do you know how much you cost this company?" I shook my head. "Over two hundred thousand dollars so far." My knees buckled.

"Don't you have insurance?"

"You insolent little bastard. Of course, we have insurance, but how long do you think they will stay with us if we present them with accidents like this? Christ almighty, boy. We had to call a special team in from Texas to cap the damn thing. They worked all night and just finished this morning." Whitmore leaned back in his chair. It groaned its discontent. He was a huge man, tall, and fat. "Well, answer me boy. How long do you think it's going to be before that insurance company raises my rates?"

"Not long, I guess." I was trying not to say too much. I didn't see any sense in making him angrier than he was.

"Finally, you're talking some sense. I have a letter in front of me that specifically says that my insurance rates are about to double. They couldn't even wait for the regular mail—a messenger dropped it off this morning before I even got here. That's how anxious they are." Whitmore leaned forward, and the chair groaned. He glared at me, his bushy gray eyebrows arched over two fiery bloodshot eyes. "You are the cause of that increase, boy. You are going to pay dearly. You are going to work your butt off from morning to night. You are mine." He pushed his cigar in my face, so close, I gagged on the smoke and the stench.

My head reeled. I did not want to go back to boardroading—dusk to dawn in the stifling heat or freezing cold, up to my ankles in mud, snakes and all sorts of bugs, sore muscles in the evening, sore muscles in the morning, and in my case, my already tiny paycheck was going to get tinier. I couldn't let that happen, but I didn't want to go to jail either. Then I had an idea. Whitmore couldn't touch me if I was in the service.

"Mr. Whitmore," I said, trying to sound as sincere as I could. "I"m real sorry about that accident, but it was an accident, sir. I did not intentionally set out to blow up the well. I would really like to help you pay your insurance increase, but I'm afraid I won't be able to, sir." Whitmore jumped up from his chair, as if blown out of it. I didn't give him a chance to take his cigar out of his mouth. "I've been drafted, Mr. Whitmore," I said, backing away from his desk. "Uncle Sam wants me."

"What?" he bellowed, but he did not advance.

"I've been drafted, Mr. Whitmore. They want me to go to the army."

Whitmore surprised me. He started laughing, a deep, jolly, enjoyable laugh. I grinned.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said, once he caught his breath. "I was going to make your life pure hell, boy, but the army can do that good enough for me. Get your little butt out of my office and off my property." I turned around and started for the door. "And boy." I stopped with my hand on the knob.

"Yes sir?"

"Next time I see you, if I ever see you, you damn well better salute me."

"Yes, sir." I almost ran out of his office building, and since no one offered me a ride home, I thumbed again.

I was beginning to hate my life.