Grape Jelly

Grape Jelly

Bob Partner closed his locker with more force than usual, which was more force than barely necessary.  On most days he would shut his locker, start away, and then turn back to push it and make sure it was closed completely. But that slight difference between slamming and absently shutting gave him the satisfaction he needed with the abrupt finality of the clicking lock and the knowledge he needn’t look back.  His head bobbed among other heads heading to classrooms, checked cotton shoulders and dresses of aquamarine, yellow and black, the boys’ hair cropped tight and the girls’ shoulder length and bobbed, headbands and bangs. 

Arriving at his first class, Chemistry, he was stalled in the doorway by a wall of red and white Wichita North football jackets, with one head a little taller than the others and unfortunately turned slightly toward Bob.  Karl Kendall’s head had the dimensions of a marshmallow with a haircut that matched Johnny Unitas.  He had wide set bulgy eyes, fleshy lips and had been shaving since the seventh grade.  But the only similarity between Kendall and Unitas was that each had once held a football in his hands.  Karl was manhandling two of his associates when he turned and saw Bob.  “Fartner!” he yelled.  He went back to pulling on his teammates’ jackets, one in each hand as the period bell sounded.  He held fast onto his two friends and pulled them slightly toward the doorway, then stopping and barking into the hallway, “Stop making us late to class!  You’re blocking the doorway!”  Bob and a few other kids sighed, looked at each other and waited.  Karl Kendall looked back to see his teacher standing, looking downward and absently scribbling on paper.  He continued blocking the way and looking back until he saw his teacher exhale, throw down his pencil, turn himself toward the doorway and take a stride.  That’s when Kendall let them loose turned to go in the class and said, “God, you guys are so annoying.  Hi, Mr. Beedo.  What’re we doing today?”

“Moribito.  You’ll see in a minute, Mr. Kendall,” the teacher said looking away from him.

Bob was happy to finally get to his seat and take notes.  Thank God this day was lecture and demonstration since the last thing he wanted to do was lab.  He could simply listen and take notes and relax.  On these days, the Karl Kendalls of the world were inclined toward hibernation, a torpor that was not quite sleep, but a form of listlessness that got them through lean periods.  Instead of the winter seasons, in these cases it was a forty-five minute class.  It was too exhausting for them to interrupt a teacher lecturing because then they would be asked pointed questions on the material and be put on the spot.  But on laboratory days they could stand, lumber about, grope each other and pour sulfur in your flask while you stood there mouth agape.

As his teacher droned on about mole calculations, Bob took productive notes but found enough time to draw in the margins of his paper because he had read the chapter assigned for homework the night before.  He was tired from a late night washing dishes at Maureen’s Kitchen.  He only worked at Maureen’s two nights a week because her cousin was the full time dishwasher and was only off on Thursdays and Fridays, but Bob worked raking leaves after school and before he went to Maureen’s last night.  He had made a lot of money that fall raking leaves, but now it was the end of November and this job was probably his last.  His grandmother’s friends had gotten wind of his efficiency and low price so he and his cousin Bucky found themselves with a lot of work and were forming a teenage boy’s version of a business.  They talked about shoveling the same clients’ walkways and drives when the snow was to come.  So far that fall he had saved $134.  After being called on, he correctly answered a question on a mole formula so he was able to go back to his drawing of a mole squinting at a page where he had written 1+2=?.   The lecture ended five minutes early, so the kids in his class got to chat for a few minutes before the bell rang. 

“No. It’s true.  Mr. Ed talks because they put peanut butter in his mouth.”

“Nah.  My dad says they shock him with some kind of like electrodes.  Not ones that hurt him, but they just like make his lips jerk around.”

“That’s terrible…”

“Nah…It doesn’t hurt him.  They’re the kind of shocks that don’t hurt.”

“No.  I heard he’s got a trainer right off stage who shows him carrots and he gets the carrots when he’s done with a scene.  That’s why he makes all those funny faces and jerks his head around.  That’s what I heard.”

“Wow.  If he really does that then he is one smart horse.”

“I love Mr. Ed,” he said chuckling and shaking his head back and forth.

Mr. Ed was Bob’s favorite show, but he also really liked The Avengers and The Dick Van Dyke Show.  The Avengers was exciting and Dick Van Dyke was funny, but he most enjoyed Emma Peel and Mary Tyler Moore.  They were the most beautiful women he had ever seen, even prettier than Elizabeth Taylor in the Cleopatra poster in front of The Crawford movie theater.  They both had beautiful brown hair and eyes and they both looked like Sally Thornton.  Sally lived a few streets over from Bob and they met in his third grade class.  For Valentine’s Day, their teacher Mrs. Restive sent a letter home that asked kids to bring in Valentine’s cards for each other.  They should bring one card for each of the girls in the class if they were boys and one card for each of the boys in the class if they were girls.  Although they were mostly vague and innocuous proclamations, when third-grade Bob was filling them out in his awkward print the night before V-Day, he agonized over which one to pick for Sally and chose one with a duck in a sailor suit and a heart that said, “Watch this Duck-Cling to You.”  It seemed the most forward out of the others.  He was eager and excited to give her his card, but when the time came for the kids to leave their seats and place their cards on their classmates’ labeled desks he was stricken with terror.  He thought his card for Sally was too forward and he was afraid she would know how he really felt, so when he got to her desk, he paused, withheld the card and moved on.  The only girl he wanted to give a card to was the only one to which he did not.  When all the kids were finished passing out cards and he got back to his desk, he had eleven cards waiting for him.  When he got off the bus that afternoon, he rushed into his house and tore open each card looking only for the signed name until he found Sally’s.  He saved that card and the envelope and threw the rest in the trashcan to the consternation of his mother.

On a later occasion when they were in seventh grade, he met her at a skating pond.  He was there with his grandfather and was learning to ice skate.  He took to it pretty quickly and began to enjoy the feeling of self-propulsion and then making a hard turn.  There was a lot of activity on the frozen pond, a hockey game with older boys took over a sizable section, while the rest of the people, boys, girls, parents, skated in a lazy perimeter.  He noticed the strength and skill of the hockey players, their confidence in their abrupt turns and stops and was a little jealous.  But he was having fun and getting better and better at his own accelerations and turns.  He returned to his grandfather who was gracefully moving along with his hands behind his back.  His grandfather was a slight man but had the amiable features of Gary Cooper.

“How’re ya doing, my boy?”

“Great, sir,” he said, sweaty and happy.  “I think I’m getting the hang of this now.” 

And at that point, Sally skated up to them.  He noticed there were some pretty girls on the ice, but at first he was nervous about the ice breaking and then he was busy with learning to skate.  After that he was enjoying it too much to take notice of anything, but now all he could see was her.  She was wearing a navy blue sweater and black snow pants with white gloves, scarf and headband.  Her almond eyes, like a gypsy woman’s eyes, were as bright as her smile, her lips and cheeks rouged from the cold air. 

“Hello, young lady!”

“Hello sir,” she said cheerily.  “Bob, right?  You live on Park?”

“Yeah.  Sally…”

“Thornton.  We were in Mrs. Restive’s together.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, we were.”

“Those are some nice skates you’ve got there,” his grandfather interjected and began a conversation that lasted while they skated the circumference of all the activity in the middle of the ice.  His grandfather was really good with people.  While she was chatting with his grandfather, she would frequently look to Bob and try to include him in the conversation, but mostly he could only stammer out a “Yeah” in agreement.  She was so pretty on the ice beneath the blue sky talking with his grandfather like they were old friends, if any boy can fall in love in an instant, it happened to Bob.  But in an instant a boy can destroy his own fantasies like a dropped pile of dishes.  One of the older hockey players slid up to Sally and started to speak with her enthusiastically.  He had ice shavings on his back across his broad shoulders and she turned him around so she could brush them off and just as quickly as he arrived, he dashed back for the game.  “So much for that,”  Bob thought.

Nothing had changed for Sally and his grandfather, so they all continued to skate together, but Bob avoided eye contact with her and ventured on some laps on his own before returning to their leisurely pace.  When it was time to leave Sally said to Bob directly, “So do you come here to skate a lot?”

“No.  Just this time.”

“Oh,” she said, “Hey, you know in the springtime my girlfriends and I play tennis in the park by your house.  Maybe I’ll see you there sometime?”

“Yeah.  Probably.”

“Okay then.  It was nice meeting you Mr. Partner.  Bye Bob,” she said smiling and then skated away. 

When they were in the car his grandfather said while driving, “Well, that Sally was a nice girl.”

“Yeah,” Bob replied watching the passing mailboxes.

“And she certainly seemed interested in you,” said his grandfather looking away from the road and directly at Bob.

“Yeah.  Well, she had a boyfriend there.”

“She did?”

“Yeah.  That hockey kid.”

“Oooh !  That hockey kid was her cousin from Salina visiting.  You didn’t hear us talking about that?” chuckled his grandfather.  Bob turned from the mailboxes and looked at his grandfather.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Rats.”

When they got to high school, they had several classes together, English three years straight.  Now, Sally was his friend and they often walked home together.  Sometimes they were alone, but not often, though those days alone were his favorite.    Mostly they walked with her friend Katherine, a mousy but pleasant girl who always walked with her arms crossed, Bucky who was always clamoring for attention by acting goofy and putting boxes on his head, and Emmie.  Emmie was a girl who lived a few doors down from Bob and took the special education class in a separate wing.  Her mother and Bob’s were close and Bob had known Emmie since they were young.  Emmie’s mother asked Mrs. Partner if it would be okay that fall if her daughter could walk home with Bob, now that she was getting older and getting along well in school now.  Bob’s mother considerately asked him about it.

“Well, yeah, mom…but she’ll try to hold my hand.”

“I’ll talk to Ellen about that.  You’ve always been so good with her.  And she really likes you.”

“That’s the problem.”

Emmie’s mother wrote a letter to the school asking permission for her daughter to walk home with a chaperone, one named Robert Partner, instead of taking her bus and after a meeting with Principal Strange, Mr. Robert Partner and Miss Emmie and Mrs. Ellen Boyle that discussed the responsibilities of a chaperone, permission was granted.  Emmie said several times on each of their first walks home, “I’m not going to hold hands with you, Bob.”  And at some time in October Bob noticed that when she became ebullient and started to swing her arms back and forth, she would stop herself and then walk quietly with her arms crossed.

“Hey Fartner.  Fartner,” Kendall insisted, tearing him from his thoughts.  He had come over to Bob’s table while the kids were killing time before the bell to end Chemistry.  “I’m making bets.  Bet you 10 cents I can fit my whole fist in my mouth.”  This was Kendall’s way of gathering money so he could eat extra servings at lunch.

“I’ve already seen you do it a hundred times.”

“C’mon Fartner.  You love it.”

“I’d give a nickel to see it,” said wiry wild-eyed Willy Sokol with delight.

Karl Kendall demanded the money be put on the desk, then put on a serious countenance, shook out his shoulders in preparation and brought his closed fist slowly to his mouth like a sword swallower.  He opened his mouth wide bearing large uniformly flat teeth and pale gums.  As he expertly turned his knuckles to the proper angle like professional movers can maneuver a couch through a doorway, his eyes bulged slightly and his forehead and cheeks were strained with red and white creases.  His hand was then gone to the wrist.  It reminded Bob of a film he saw in Biology the year before when a snake unhinged his jaw and swallowed an egg.  When Kendall popped his fist out of his mouth and wiry wild-eyed Willy Sokol was leaning back in peals of laughter slapping his thighs with his palms, Bob began to chuckle because he realized that even though everyone thought Willy was weird, Sokol was probably the smartest kid he knew.

“C’mon Fartner.  Now you.”

“I’m not trying that.”

“No. A bet.  25 cents says I go up and fart right in front of old Beedo.”

“I’m not betting that.  You’ll just get in trouble and you don’t care.”

“How about I do it and I don’t get in trouble you owe me and if I do get in trouble I owe you.”

Bob contemplated the situation.  He had fifty cents in his pocket and lunch was usually 35 cents, but he had another two quarters in his jacket pocket in his locker.  There was no way Mr. Moribito would put up with that and this way he would see Kendall get in trouble and win 25 cents. 

“You’re on,” said Bob.

“Money on the table first.”

“Okay, but you too.”

Kendall slammed a quarter down and Bob took out his own two from his pocket, only one was a nickel. “Oh,” he paused.

“What’s the problem, Fartner?  I didn’t know you was a Welsh man.”

Bob remembered quickly about the money in his jacket and slammed down his own quarter.  Kendall squared his shoulders back and adjusted his varsity football jacket and approached his teacher who was at his desk grading papers.  He did not look up when his student asked to use the restroom and simply said, “I’m not giving you a pass to leave when we have thirty seconds before the bell.”

“But I really have to go,” whined Kendall pretending to squirm his face reddening.  Then he let a loud one go.

Mr. Moribito sighed and said loudly, “If I wanted to work with sweating hogs, Mr. Kendall, I would have become a farmer.”  A success-filled Karl Kendall sauntered over and collected his winnings.  Bob didn’t care about losing the money since it was really Kendall that was losing, but then he thought and said, “Hey, what are they serving for lunch today?”

“Chicken and biscuits.  Oh, and peanut butter sandwiches with grape jelly,” replied Sokol.

“Grape jelly?” 

Every fall, Mrs. Clemence, one of the lunch ladies would make grape jelly from the vines on her home.  The jelly wouldn’t last two weeks and it would only be served on a few school days.  And on those days, they sold out if you weren’t in front of the line because she only made twenty or so of the sandwiches.  Grape jelly was his favorite and his mom would never buy it even when he asked her because she claimed she was allergic to grapes when she was young.  Grapes and crabmeat.  He was ecstatic.  All he needed to do was get the money from his locker early and then go straight from English to the lunch line.

During Latin his mind wandered as the teacher droned through declensions.  He almost asked Sally to go to the movies with him the day before when they were walking home.  He waited too long while cousin Bucky was distracting everyone by taking a framed still-life painting that was in someone’s garbage and smashing his head through its center.  Before he knew it she and Katherine peeled off from them with a wave and a smile when they got to her corner.   She had mentioned that she wanted to see the Hitchcock birds movie but was afraid to because she was so “creeped out by birds to begin with.”  He thought he could ask her to go with him alone and she would get the idea how he felt, even though he wasn’t exactly sure of what that was himself.  He was also getting to be really hungry.  He was distracted but mollified by the thought of a grape jelly sandwich and milk in his future.  He skipped breakfast that morning since he was tired from working the night before and he wished he didn’t.

Gym class was good because they were still outside and played soccer.  He scored two goals.  It was good too because he didn’t have the chance to get nervous about asking Sally or think of food.  But in the locker room, Kendall was telling his cronies about the girls he claimed to have stuck some part of his body into and listing the ones he planned on violating in the future.  When Bob heard him mention Sally as someone in his future plans he felt an uncontrollable anger, but then mild relief when Kendall didn’t say anything profane about her and then started talking about the new female English teacher. 

Through Study Hall Bob could only feel hunger and nervousness.  English was the next period and then lunch.  He couldn’t understand why he was so worried about asking Sally since she was practically asking him to go with her just a few days before.  He just had to figure out a way to make sure they were to go alone.  He wanted to kiss her and hold her hand.  He wanted her to be his girlfriend. 

He was also really, really hungry.

During English they had a substitute who was in fact 93 years old.  She was four feet tall, had hunched shoulders and used a cane.  She didn’t take notice of the seating plan so the students sat where they wanted and when Sally came in she sat next to Bob as he had hoped.  They were to silently read and answer questions on an O’ Henry story. The ancient substitute may not have enforced the assigned seats but she was certain on the silence.  When Eric Glover tried to whisper to Tim McGuire for a piece of gum, the substitute bolted upright from her chair, glowered at him with a confusing stare and emitted a phlegmy grumble.  Bob figured he’d delay while gathering his books at the end of class and she would wait for him.  Then he would say, “Hey, we should go see The Birds tomorrow.  The Saturday show is at 2.  I was thinking too that if it is kind of scary we should go with just us.”  He had it down perfectly.

He thought the story was okay.  It was  about some guy who drowned trying to get back a love letter in a bottle that he threw in the sea.  He had a hard time concentrating though because Sally looked so pretty and he was finally going to ask her.  Her face looked like it even smelled good.  It would be so nice in the theater and when she got scared she would grab his hand or maybe lean into him with his arm around her.  And he was also really hungry.  But it was only a half hour to lunch.  “Oh no!” he thought. The money in his locker.  He panicked because if he didn’t rush straight to the lunch line, there was a strong chance the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches would be gone.  He couldn’t dally with Sally and his locker was on the opposite side of the school from the lunch room.  He would ask her during lunch instead, but he still needed to get to his locker somehow.  Principal Strange had announced last week that substitutes were no longer allowed to issue corridor passes because too many kids were taking advantage of them and some kids were smoking in the bathroom and set the garbage can on fire.

He waited until three minutes before the end of class hoping this woman would give him a pass to the bathroom.  It was his only chance.  If he left his books at his desk, he could get them after he finished lunch and it would look like a true emergency if he were to ask right before the bell.  He got out of his desk and Sally gave him a quizzical look as he approached the teacher’s desk.  She was putting a cap on a pen with great difficulty when she looked up at him with bulgy, glaucous eyes.  Her face did not look like it smelled good.

“Ma’am?  May I have a pass to use the restroom?  It’s a bit of an emergency.”

Her head shook with a slight palsy and she said, “What’s your name?” as she lifted the blue passbook from the desktop.  Walking swiftly he made it halfway to his locker, to the main atrium of the school, when Principal Strange stepped out from a restroom door.

“Excuse me, young man,” he boomed, “May I see your corridor pass?”  Bob’s heart rate quickened as he handed over his pass.  “Who wrote this?  It’s barely legible.”  The radio on the pricipal’s hip crackled and the voice of the main office secretary asked the principal to please come at once to the office.  It was an emergency.  Bob thought it sounded like she was sobbing.  “No shenanigans from you, young man,” Principal Strange said as he handed back Bob’s pass and turned quickly in the direction of the main office.  He bolted to his locker, fished the two quarters from his jacket pocket and slammed it shut.  The bell rang.

After a few quick and long strides, he was surrounded by kids pouring from classrooms into the hallway.  He kept a quick pace, not quite running but taking advantage of open lanes to pass those in his way.  He made excellent time to the cafeteria and there were only about ten kids in line.  “Everything worked out perfectly,” he thought and smiled as he looked at the pile of sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.  He was going to buy two of those sandwiches.  He noticed the line wasn’t moving and saw the lunch lady fumbling with register tape.  The cafeteria was filling up with the bustle and noise of teenagers and the line behind him was growing.  Four kids ahead of him, he saw Karl Kendall walk up and butt in line.  The woman closed the hood of the register and began to accept money again.  He controlled his eagerness knowing that there was no way they would sell out the sandwiches by the time he got to the register.  Karl Kendall left the register after paying holding two trays of food, each with a wrapped sandwich placed on top of the chicken and biscuits.  The woman behind the counter, Mrs. Clemence herself, asked him what he wanted.  “Two PBJ’s and two milks, please.”

The kid in front of him paid and walked away with his tray.  Suddenly, Principal Strange’s voice came over the loudspeaker.  “All students report to the gymnasium immediately for an assembly.  I repeat:  All students to the gymnasium immediately.”

Bob was stunned and looked at the cashier in panic.  A girl came rushing into the cafeteria crying and yelled out, “The president was shot!  The president is dead!”  The entire cafeteria went silent as the students looked around in bewilderment. 

Karl Kendall said loudly, “John Kennedy is dead?”

“It’s true!” yelled a young man from the crowd.

There was more stunned silence which graduated from murmuring to sobbing and panic.  Bob looked to the cashier whose netted head was beginning to hang.  Her blue eyes through her glasses were starting to cloud.  Quickly, he thrust out his arm with the two quarters in his open palm.  “Please?” he implored.  She took his two quarters and gave him a dime.

He started from the register and saw the line behind him disperse as all the students began to head to the gymnasium.  He went quickly to a table and sat down amidst the sobbing and stunned.  He looked to the entryway of the cafeteria and saw Sally crying.  Standing next to her was Karl Kendall crying as well.  Then, very naturally, they joined in a consoling embrace and cried together, eventually moving with all the other kids and lunch ladies and staff members towards the gymnasium leaving Bob alone with the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich he ever had in his life.

August 2016   Draft