I did not want any of this furniture. Anyway, I thought with some cynicism, it wouldn't match the towels that Julie picked out. I went to my old bedroom to see if there was anything there that I wanted. Most of my things had been taken over to Uncle Jesse's in the last couple of years, but I found a worn copy of Huckleberry Finn that I had read many times. I picked it up and put it in my backpack. I wanted very much to leave this all behind me, but I wouldn't let my parents' betrayal take the pleasures of Huckleberry Finn away from me.
I was getting ready to leave when I decided to check the attic one last time. I climbed the stairs and pulled the string that turned on the light. The attic was just about empty. Uncle Earl told me that the Feds had combed over the place looking for evidence again the porno ring. Apparently they had found quite a stash in the attic and had confiscated nearly everything that was up here. There was an empty cardboard box turned upside down and some crinkled up packing paper. I also noticed a black plastic something in the pink insulation under the eaves. I walked over and picked it up. It was videocassette tape. The Feds must have dropped it when they were cleaning out the place. I couldn't decide what to do with it. On one hand I wanted to walk away and leave all this behind. On the other hand I thought I should see what they had done in case I felt guilty later that I had been too hard on them. My vindictiveness won over. I took the tape downstairs and popped it into the VCR.
At first there was just white noise and I had almost decided that the tape was blank. As I reached toward the eject button a picture came into clear focus. It was some guy in his mid thirties going at it with some underage twinkie who couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen, although from this angle it was really hard to tell. I couldn't see the guy's face but I noted that he looked like one of the town lowlifes from the other side of the tracks.
Our town, like most towns, had a lowlife section on the south side separated from the rest of us by the railroad easement. All that the easement consisted of was the tracks, telephone lines and five feet of cleared area on each side of the tracks. One could easily cross the easement on foot, but it serve as more of a psychological barrier than a physical one. The sherrif could only cross at the railroad crossing which served as a gateway to the area. He never visited unless he was called and he was rarely called because the inhabitants had no use for law enforcement. Decent people pretended like the area didn't even exist - out of sight out of mind. And the south side inhabitants rarely came across the tracks because they always landed up getting arrested for something.
The Fantods had some poor cousins who lived on the south side. Earl refered to them as the black sheep of the family, but would rarely elaborate. I wondered if they were somehow involved in this porno ring. It would be just the kind of thing they would do with relish. The girl looked like a Fantod also. She had the same straight brown hair that Julie had. A wave of revulsion washed over me as I thought about this dirty business and the even dirtier down county Fantods. I had seen enough!
I was reaching for the eject button when the camera angle changed and caught the blue eyes of the underage twinkie. Her eyes were like blue sapphires. Just like... My God! It was Julie Fantod!
It was only a glimpse, less than a second or two. I rewound it a played it again. I slowed it down. It was fuzzy and difficult to see. But it was her. It was Julie. No wonder she had been acting so strangely. No wonder she had said that things were complicated.
A raw, burning emptiness welled up inside of me. I felt, for a moment, as though my chest would explode, like I had grabbed an electric fence with both hands, like the nuclei of every cell in my body had been ripped out at once. A baseball of pressure grew in my throat and I knew I was going to be sick. I ran to bathroom and pushed my face into the porcelain bowl. I lost my lunch, my soul and my reason to live all in a few powerful spasms.
I don't know how long I sat there dazed and trying to make sense out of it all, but eventually my defenses kicked in. I felt calm, almost numb, as though I had risen above all feeling. I felt mechanical and deliberate. I went back out into the living room and found that the tape had played to end and kicked off the VCR. Well, I hope they had a good time, I thought cynically, feeling no emotional reaction at all. All of a sudden leaving town forever sounded like a very good idea. So I headed back to Uncle Jesse's to get my stuff.
It must have been around two in the morning when I arrived at Uncle Jesse's. My trunk was being sent ahead so all I had to do was to grab my travel bag with a few necessities for the next week. I decided it would be better to go out the back way so I headed into the kitchen. Julie was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table. As I got to the back door I heard a voice.
"Taddy. Don't be angry with me." She was almost in tears.
It tore my heart. I wanted to put my arms around her and comfort her. But I was afraid that I also might kill her.
"I just don't think it would work out if we were steadies."
Oh, that, I thought. She's still on that steady thing. She flipped on the light and I turned and looked at her. I loved her as much as I hated her. The waves of emotion were rocking my very core and I steeled myself against feeling anything. A calm deliberateness came over me and she said "What is it Taddy?"
"Nothing" I said with clipped vindictiveness.
"Nothing? It sure looks to me like something is the matter."
"It's too complicated.", I said vindictively, with anger and venom, thoroughly enjoying the irony of the situation.
"What's too complicated?"
"Nothing!"
Tears welled up in her eyes. Those eyes that sparkled like polished sapphires. I was angry and hurt. I wanted to hold her accountable and I just wanted to hold her. I wanted to forgive her and I wanted to kill her. I loved her and hated her all at once. I staggered a step as the competing emotions battled within me. I knew that if I said anything or let myself feel anything that I would loose control. So I pivoted crisply on one foot and marched toward the door.
"I hate you!" she screamed, stamping her foot as though to punctuate her anguish. "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"
Not as much as I hate myself, I thought as I went out the door, letting the screen slam behind me. I went to the bus station and spent the last night of summer sleeping in a very uncomfortable molded plastic chair. I awoke a few minutes before my bus was scheduled to leave. I looked around at the homeless people that populated the bus station in the early morning. I, too, felt like a person without a home. I guess, when you got down to it, I was.