Although reminiscent now, the mood of Joyce Carol Oates’s short story seems appropriate today. The story tells of the adventures of a teenage girl, its title a perfectly timed metaphor as we forge ahead into an uncertain future. Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938) dedicated this work to Bob Dylan. It allows the reader a glimpse into the thoughts of a young writer of her time. Below is the second of four installments. (For continuity, the last sentence of the last paragraph is: ”You wanta come for a ride!” he said.)Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder.
“Don’tcha like my car? New paint job,” he said. “Hey--”
“What?”
“You’re cute.”
She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door.
“Don’tcha believe me, or what?” he said.
“Look, I don’t even know who you are,” Connie said in disgust.
“Hey, Ellie’s got a radio, see. Mine’s broke down.” He lifted his friend’s arm and showed her the little transistor the boy was holding, and now Connie began to hear the music. It was the same program that was playing inside the house.
“Bobby King?” she said.
“I listen to him all the time. I think he’s great.”
“He’s kind of great,” Connie said reluctantly.
“Listen, that guy’s great. He knows where the action is.”
Connie blushed a little, because the glasses made it impossible for her to see just what this boy was looking at. She couldn’t decide if she liked him or if he was just a jerk, and so she dawdled in the doorway and wouldn’t come down or go back inside. She said, “What’s all that stuff painted on your car?”
“Can’tcha read it?” He opened the door very carefully, as if he was afraid it might fall off. He slid out just as carefully. planting his feet firmly on the ground, the tiny metallic world in his glasses slowing down like gelatine hardening and in the midst of it Connie’s bright green blouse.
“This here is my name to begin with,” he said.
ARNOLD FRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on the side, with a drawing of a round grinning face that reminded Connie of a pumpkin, except it wore sunglasses. “I wanta introduce myself, I’m Arnold Friend and that’s my real name and I’m gonna be your friend, honey, and inside the car’s Ellie Oscar, he’s kinda shy.” Ellie brought his transistor radio up to his shoulder and balanced it there. “Now these numbers are a secret code, honey,” Arnold Friend explained. He read off the numbers 33, 19, 17, and raised his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that, but she didn’t think much of it. The left rear fender had been smashed and around it was written, on the gleaning gold background: DONE BY CRAZY WOMAN DRIVER. Connie had to laugh at that. Arnold Friend was pleased at her laugher and looked up at her. “Around the other side’s a lot more--you wanta come and see them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I?”
“Don’tcha wanta see what’s on the car? Don’tcha wanta go for a ride?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“I got things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Things.”
He laughed as if she had said something funny. He slapped his thighs. He was standing in a strange way, leaning back against the car as if he were balancing himself. He wasn’t tall, only an inch or so taller than she would be if she came down to him. Connie liked the way he was dressed, which was the way all of them dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed into black, scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his waist in and showed how lean he was, and a white pullover shirt that was a little soiled and showed the hard small muscles of his arms and shoulders. He looked as if he probably did hard work, lifting and carrying things. Even his neck looked muscular. And his face was a familiar face, somehow: the jaw and chin and cheeks slightly darkened, because he hadn’t shaved for a day or two, and the nose long and hawklike, sniffing as if she were a treat he was going to gobble up and it was all a joke.
“Connie, you ain’t telling the truth. This is your day set aside for a ride with me and you know it,” he said, still laughing. The way he straightened and recovered from his fit of laughing showed that it had all been fake.
“How do you know what my name is?” she said suspiciously.
“It’s Connie.”
“Maybe and maybe not.”
“I know my Connie,” he said, wagging his finger. Now she remembered him even better, back at the restaurant, and her cheeks warmed at the thought of how she sucked in her breath just at the moment she passed him--how she must have looked at him. And he had remembered her. “Ellie and I come out here especially for you,” he said. “Ellie can sit in the back. How about it?”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where’re we going?”
He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his eyes was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light. His eyes were like chips of broken glass that catch the light in an amiable way. He smiled. It was as if the idea of going for a ride somewhere, to some place, was a new idea to him.
“Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart.”
“I never said my name was Connie,” she said.
“But I know what it is. I know your name and all about you, lots of things,” Arnold Friend said. He had not moved yet but stood still leading back against the side of his jalopy. “I took a special interest in you, such a pretty girl, and found out all about you, like I know your parents and sister are gone somewheres, and I know where and how long they’re going to be gone, and I know who you were with last night, and your best girlfriend’s name is Betty. Right?”
He spoke in a simple lilting voice, exactly as if he were reciting the words to a song. His smile assured her that everything was fine. In the car, Ellie turned up the volume on his radio and did not bother to look around at them.
“Ellie can sit in the back seat,” Arnold Friend said. He indicated his friend with a casual jerk of his chin, as if Ellie did not count and she should not bother with him.
“How’d you find out all that stuff?” Connie said.
“Listen: Betty Schultz and Tony Fitch and Jimmy Pettinger and Nancy Pettinger,” he said, in a chant. “Raymond Stanley and Bob Hutter--”
“Do you know all those kids?”
“I know everybody.”
“Look, you’re kidding. You’re not from around here.”
“Sure.”
“But--how come we never saw you before?”
“Sure you saw me before,” he said. He looked down at his boots as if he were a little offended. “You just don’t remember.”
“I guess I’d remember you,” Connie said.
“Yeah?” He looked up at this beaming. He was pleased. He began to mark time with the music from Ellie’s radio, tapping his fists lightly together. Connie looked away from his smile to the car, which was painted so bright it almost hurt her eyes to look at it. She looked at the name, ARNOLD FRIEND. And up at the front fender was an expression that was familiar--MAN THE FLYING SAUCERS. It was an expression kids had used the year before, but didn’t use this year. She looked at it for a while as if the words meant something to her that she did not yet know.
“What’re you thinking about? Huh?” Arnold Friend demanded. “Not worried about your hair blowing around in the car, are you?”
“No.”
“Think I maybe can’t drive good?”
“How do I know?”
“You’re a hard girl to handle. How come?” he said. “Don’t you know I’m your friend? Didn’t you see me put my sign in the air when you walked by?”
“What sign?”
“My sign.” And he drew an X in the air, leaning out toward her. They were maybe ten feet apart. After his hand fell back to his side X was still in the air, almost visible. Connie let the screen door close and stood perfectly still inside it, listening to the music from her radio and the boy’s blend together. She stared at Arnold Friend. He stood there so stiffly relaxed, pretending to be relaxed, with one hand idly on the door handle as if he were keeping himself up that way and had no intention of ever moving again. She recognized most things about him, the tight jeans that showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots and the tight shirt, and even that slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across ideas they didn’t want to put into words. She recognized all this and also the singsong way he talked, slightly mocking, kidding, but serious and a little melancholy, and she recognized the way he tapped one fist against the other in homage of the perpetual music behind him. But all these things did not come together.
She said suddenly, “Hey, how old are you?”
His smile faded. She could see then that he wasn’t a kid, he was much older--thirty, maybe more. At this knowledge her heart began to pound faster.
“That’s a crazy thing to ask. Can’tcha see I’m your own age?”
“Like hell you are.”
“Or maybe a coupla years older, I’m eighteen.”
“Eighteen?” she said doubtfully.
He grinned to reassure her and lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. His teeth were big and white. He grinned so broadly his eyes became slits and she saw how thick the lashes were, thick and black as if painted with a black tarlike material. Then he seemed to become embarrassed, abruptly, and looked over his shoulder at Ellie. “Him, he’s crazy.” he said. “Ain’t he a riot, he’s a nut, a real character.” Ellie was still listening to the music. His sunglasses told nothing about what he was thinking. He wore a bright orange shirt unbuttoned halfway to show his chest, which was a pale, bluish chest and not muscular like Arnold Friend’s. His shirt collar was turned up all around and the very tips of the collar pointed out past his chin as if they were protecting him. He was pressing the transistor radio up against his ear and sat there in a kind of daze, right in the sun.
“He’s kinda strange,” Connie said.
“Hey, she says you’re kinda strange! Kinda strange!” Arnold Friend cried. He pounded on the car to get Ellie’s attention. Ellie turned for the first time and Connie saw with shock that he wasn’t a kid either--he had a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly as if the veins grew too close to the surface of the skin, the face of a forty-year-old baby. Connie felt a wave of dizziness rise in her at this sight and she stared at him as if waiting for something to change the shock of the moment, make it all right again. Ellie’s lips kept shaping words, mumbling along with the words blasting in his ear.
Stay tuned for part three of four parts in the next blog post.
