Chapter 7 --- October

OCTOBER

         It was a glorious fall day, that second Sunday in October. Summer was passing but having a last fling. The air was warm and bright, cleanly washed by rain in the night, with just an edge of crispness to let you know the season was changing.

         Church was over. Jesse was watching his chance to go over and talk with Nyla Jaffreys. He felt like a big oaf around her, with his big, work scarred hands that never looked really clean. She made him tongue tied and turned him into an idiot but right then she was the most beautiful thing in the room and he wanted to see her for a few minutes before heading home. Her eyes were big and brown and looked up at him out of a soul so pure and good ~ he came face to face with her and all he could say was "Hi."

         She said "Hi Jess," and there was a lyrical music in her voice. It was as if they were alone in this place, just the two of them alone in the midst of the after church crowd.

         Treacher looked over at them and said to Lillian, "You see that, Lil? I think your boy is in love."

         She did see that. "She's a lovely girl," she said.

         "That she is."

         "It was bound to happen, but they're too young." Something Nyla said made Jesse laugh then. Lillian said, "I wonder what they're talking about."

         "Whatever it is I bet it ain't what he's thinking about. So which one of us is going to talk to him about this?"

         Lillian said quickly, "Maybe you should."

         "Why is that?"

         "Because you're a man ~~ "

         "You're his mother."

         "I guess we both need to. I don't know what to say, though."

         Joey was under the trees with some of his friends. Lillian went to get him. Treacher started down the steps. "Let's go, Jesse," he said as he walked past him.

         Reluctant to return to earth, Jess hesitated, but then Nyla's mother called her. She said she'd see him tomorrow at school and hurried away to get into the car with her parents.

         Treacher said again, "Let's go. Unless you want to walk home."

         Jesse followed him to the parking lot. He opened the passenger door and stood there looking at the Jaffreys' car, the one with Nyla in it. "Get in," Treacher told him. He didn't respond. Treacher's patience evaporated and he raised his voice: "Jesse get in the car!"

         Jess got in. Treacher sat looking at the boy beside him. He knew already what kind of passion Jesse was capable of. He had seen him in a murderous rage and that was terrifying; now he was seeing him in love and that was not altogether a comfortable thing either. That was the thing with Jesse; he took everything big. Another boy his age might have a dozen girlfriends between now and twenty, in love and out of love along the way. Not this boy. He had fallen in love like an egg rolling off the table, and that was with all the potential for getting hurt and getting in over his head. Paul turned the key and started the car. He was thinking he would not be seventeen again if it was offered to him. Forty maybe. But not seventeen.

         That afternoon Jesse brought up the subject himself. "Mom how do I ask a girl to go out with me?"

         "You ask her. Where do you want to take her?"

         "I don't know."

         "Well first you have to decide that, then you tell her about it and ask her."

         "What if she says no?"

         Lillian had seen how Nyla looked at him and she thought the chances of her saying no were very slight. But she said, "That's the chance you take, if she says no then she says no, but unless you ask you'll never find out."

         Jesse pushed up his glasses. "You're a girl, tell me what to say to her?"

         "I haven't been a girl in a long time. What were you saying to her this morning?"

         "I don't even know. Probably something stupid."

         Not likely, she thought. She said, "I don't think she thought it was stupid. She really likes you, Jesse."

         He took heart. "How can you tell?"

         "She was looking at you as if she likes you. There's plenty of other boys her age in the church; I didn't see her talking to any of them." This was true. Any of the other guys probably had more to offer her, too; for one thing the other guys didn't have to take a little kid with them everywhere they went. They had more money to spend, too, and Jack Palmer and Eddie Neville even had cars.

         Lil wondered what Nyla's parents were saying to her, what Nyla's father thought of Jesse. She remembered her own father when she started going out with Big Jess. He was anything but happy about it at first. She was thinking of the things that she couldn't tell her son not to do. They were the very things she was most scared of him doing. He was talking about learning to drive. Scary. And now he was talking about going out with a girl. She thought, I can't tell him not to grow up. I can't tell him not to drive a car; I can't tell him not to like girls. Maybe I can help him learn to do things safely without accidents.

         Treacher could give Jesse some instructions man to man, but it was going to be her job to supply him with information about girls. She would always regret not having talked more to Cecily. But Cecily had been such a thorny girl, just about impossible to talk to about anything. Always ready with a smart answer, always ready to run away and slam into her room if you disagreed with her. Lillian had made the mistake of thinking Cecily was too young to get into any real trouble. She was not going to make the same mistake with Jesse!

         The trouble is, with raising kids, just when you get to know the twelve year old he turns into a teenager and he's a stranger again, and you get reacquainted and by then he towers over you and he's almost a man.

         And he was going to be a man a mother could be proud of too, with a strong growing faith in God, a powerful body and a keen mind, a heart as big as the world, and a sincere desire to be everything he should be. He governed himself with a merciless conscience. She had always said it, with Jesse it's always something. So now he was in love, with all that meant, with all that went with it. You don't like to think of your innocent little kid as becoming a sexual being with passions and desires but how stupid would she have to be to deny it?

         Looking at him now she was thinking how proud Big Jess would be of his son, how he would love him!

         The next day Treacher collared Jesse and sat him down to listen. Jesse was kind of embarrassed, not so much that Treacher was pretty graphic, but chagrined that Treacher knew so well what was on his mind. "I wasn't going to ~~" he started. But they had already covered that: what you might not be going to do that you could still end up doing anyway.

         "Put it this way, Jesse. Before you know it Joey's going to be a lot bigger than he is now and he's going to start liking girls. What will you want him to do? What will you want him to know?"

         That silenced him. Finally he said, "I'm going to have to say ~ all that to Joey some day?"

         "If you're any kind of governor you will."

         Jesse had still been thinking of Joey as a sweet little five-year-old. Right then he was getting a disturbing image of him a lot older.

         "Having a kid is a barrel of laughs, ain't it, Son?"

******

         Harley Jaffreys was looking out the front window. "Am I seeing things or was that Jesse MacIver that just left here with my daughter?"

         Nelly was putting in earrings. "It was."

         "What the hell is she doing with him?"

         "Just walking to church,."

         "Walking her to church! What's going on here, Nelly?"

         Nelly was adjusting the veil on her hat. "She likes him."

         "She likes him. Well I don't! How long has this been going on?"

         "There's nothing going on, Harl. They've known each other all their lives, and they started getting to be friends since he began coming to church, right after the school year started."

         "Nobody told me about it!"

         "There isn't any it to tell you about."

         "My daughter is walking down Wake street with Jesse MacIver and there's no it to tell me about?"

         "They're walking to church together! I think it's kind of sweet."

         "Sweet! Sweet! Out of all the young guys around here and mind you I don't like any of them all that much, she has to pick out ~~ Jesse MacIver to like? What's wrong with her anyway?"

         "Nothing's wrong with her. She's growing up and she likes boys. Didn't you like girls when you were seventeen? You must have known this was going to happen sooner or later!"

         "Not with him! Nelly you know about him!"

         "What about him?"

         "Well for one thing, he's dirt poor. And he's not going anywhere with his life,"

         "He's a worker."

         "Yes but what does he work at? Odd jobs on the farms around here. And he's violent, He turns violent at the drop of a hat!"

         "He's as gentle as a lamb with the little boy."

         "A lamb? When he went after the Bull he wasn't any lamb! He was a ~~ a T rex that's what he was! I was there! I saw the look on his face. I was scared of him and it wasn't even me he was after."

         "He lost his temper."

         "He lost his temper. He lost his temper all right! I don't want her seeing him any more, Nelly, and I'm going to tell her that and him too!"

         "No, Harl, you can't do that. Tell a girl her age not to see a boy she likes and that's all it will take to convince her she's in love with him!"

         "How would you know that?"

         "Because I was her age once."

         "Yeah well I was his age once, too, and I know how guys his age think ~~ and how they don't think!"

         "What did you do when you were his age?" Harley didn't answer. She pursued, "You didn't know me when you were his age. Who did you know?"

         "Thirty years ago? I don't remember."

         "You don't remember your first girl friend? Who was it, Harl? I bet I know, it was that Nancy Roscoe, wasn't it?"

         "No it wasn't!"

         "You never went out with Nancy? You want me to believe you're the only boy in school who didn't go out with Nancy?"

         "I never went out with Nancy Roscoe, all right? How the hell did she get into this?"

         "Well you brought it up about being Jesse's age."

         "Only to make the point I know what a seventeen year old boy thinks about! He's up to his neck in hormones and his judgment isn't jelled yet. And Nyla's too young anyway."

         "I was allowed to date at sixteen,"

         "No you weren't we didn't even know each other when you were sixteen." He broke off and gave her a searching look. "Who did you go out with when you were sixteen?"

         "I asked you first." Aware that he had once again painted himself into a corner, Harley shut up.

         Nelly was getting her coat out of the closet. "You can't tell them not to see each other. That'll backfire for sure! I didn't know I was in love with you until Daddy told me not to see you any more!"

         "He told you not to see me any more? Why?"

         "Well, let's see. He said you were dirt poor and not going anywhere with your life and he called you a fraternity boy with one thing on your mind like all the rest of them." She said this last phrase in a fair imitation of her father's voice.

         "I didn't belong to any fraternity! I didn't have that kind of money when I was at school."

         "Well he knew you were in college and he thought you were a drunken frat boy like all the rest of them."

         "Drunken! I didn't have the money to be drunken; I was lucky if I ate."

         "Well Daddy judged you that way. Are you judging Jesse?"

         "This is different, I know something about MacIver!"

         He opened the car door for her. She said, "So listen, Honey, we can't fight this. So we're better off to give our approval, keep it out in the open. Make him feel welcome to come see her here."

         Harley sat there with the keys in his hand. "Make him feel welcome ~~ "

         "Certainly. You won't tell me who the girl was but as for where, I bet it wasn't on the couch in her father's living room!"

         Harley was starting to get it. "So we get friendly with him and make him welcome to come see Nyla here, then watch them like a hawk?"

         "And let him know we value our daughter and he better, too!"

         "And what guarantee is that?"

         "There aren't any guarantees. But I'm getting to know Jesse, I think he has a good heart. He really cares for her and I think he wants to do right."

         Harley turned the key and started the car.