“Wasn’t that great? Didn’t you love it?” I asked my father.
“I can’t help thinking of another tree of people, another song,” he said. “A much darker song, but a truer one, called ‘Strange Fruit.’ I guess I’m just an old grouch.” My father squeezed my shoulder. “Do you want to stop at the 7-Eleven for a Slurpee?”
I did.
Sometime over the summer, it was worked out that Davey would attend Wilde Lake. I never knew the circumstances. I think I just assumed AJ made it happen. He had that kind of power. He had decreed that they were to be a group of six now, and so they were. (The truth was more prosaic. Davey’s parents had found a large house in Hobbit’s Glen, much more to their taste, and although it was zoned for Centennial High School, the new school was so oversubscribed that they had no trouble getting Davey into Wilde Lake—at Davey’s insistence.) The six did everything as a group. When Lynne and Bash started pairing off, AJ didn’t approve—not because he was prudish about sex, but because he thought it bad for the group. Luckily, Lynne and Bash didn’t really care that much about being boyfriend and girlfriend. They just liked to have sex.
I saw them once, that summer between their freshman and sophomore year of high school. Our father had to go out of town for an annual meeting, something to do with being a state’s attorney. Teensy had a wedding in her family and my father decided that AJ, although only fifteen, was old enough to be in charge for a night. No parties, my father said. Of course, AJ said. And had a party. Bash found a burnout college kid who was happy to buy them beer and liquor at the Village Green. They weren’t really drinkers, but it was almost obligatory to have booze at a parent-free party. AJ put me in my father’s bed with a pound of peanut M&Ms and the remote control for the small black-and-white TV on top of what our father called a chifforobe. He told me that I could do whatever I wanted, but that I must stay in my father’s room except to visit the bathroom that connected it to my room. I wasn’t sure what they were doing that was so secretive. There was music and conversation, that sweet burning smell I had noticed before. I watched a horror film, one in which Leave It to Beaver’s dad ended up underground with the Mole People. I wanted to go to the bathroom, but what if the Mole People were under my father’s high, old-fashioned bed? If I climbed down from the bed, they would reach out and grab my ankles and drag me down to that terrible place, where I would be enslaved. But I had consumed almost a gallon of orange soda. There was no way I could make it through the night. I calculated that if I leaped from the bed, I might land out of arm’s reach of the Mole person. I jumped, landing on my knees, then made my way to the bathroom without incident. The house was quiet. I assumed everyone had gone home. I decided my own room would be a cozier place to sleep even if it didn’t have a television, so I cracked the door, checking carefully for any sign of Mole People.
And then I saw them.
Saw Bash, who was completely naked, which made an impression on me. My father was modest. I had never seen him or even AJ without clothes. I had never seen a man naked, not even his buttocks. Bash was so broad that I couldn’t see anything of Lynne’s body except her face over his shoulder. Her face looked very serious. Stern, a mean teacher face. She bit her lip, whispered in his ear. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.” Yet she looked as if it were hurting, as if she yearned for him to stop. Bash made no noise at all. He barely seemed to be breathing. He tried to kiss her, but Lynne twisted her face to the side. “No, no. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Dammit. You—Let me show you—” She made some adjustment in the dark. Whatever they were doing—and I knew, yet I didn’t know—she was better at it, I could tell. She had done it before and Bash hadn’t. She was like AJ, trying to teach me basketball. I remember the others teasing Lynne about a student teacher who had given her rides home from cheerleader practice and it began to make sense. I was at that age where so much begins making sense, where stray facts and memories lingered in some waiting room of the brain until context came and took them by the hand.
Lynne hissed: “Yes. Yes. That’s it. You can do it, Bash. You can do it.”