Cemetery Street by John Zunski (free ebook reader for ipad .txt) 📕

I was brought back to the present.
Diane’s voice acquired the edge of a knife. “If you ever set foot in this house again it’ll be the sorriest day of your life!”
I scrambled from beneath the table in time to see the owner of the voice in Count’s headlock being drug down the stairs and out the door. Diane yelled as she ran down the steps after them, “Don’t hurt him, too bad.” I stood over Shannie who laid still in the coffin. Despite closed eyes, a tear sliced her makeup.


Chapter 5 Revelations

“Shannie, you’ve never looked so beautiful,” I heard him say over and over. The cadence of his voice resonated like a song whose title I couldn’t recall. Where have I heard that voice, I thought staring at the moonlit cemetery. A scantily clad Diane couldn’t stop me from obsessing. Why would Count beat the piss out of someone who complimented Shannie. Why was Shannie crying? They wouldn’t tell me. Whatever the reason, it ended our night.
“Don’t ask,” Count said the next morning. We didn’t speak all the way to school. At the front door he said, “I’ll talk to you later.”
After school, I ventured downtown in search of Russell.
"Sorry James,” Helen said from behind Wally’s counter. “Only two students at a time, you’ll have to wait your turn.”
“No worries, just looking for Russell.”
“Was here for lunch.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“If you see him, tell him I’m looking for him.”
“What for?”
“Nothing important,” I said pushing open the door. Nosy old hen, I thought leaping Wally’s steps to the sidewalk. I passed the empty park bench and stood in front of a sleazy looking taproom named Giorgio’s. A block glass window and steel door anchored a nondescript brick façade. On the door, a crud caked window rested above my eye level. I stood on my toes and peered inside. The blue glare of a TV illuminated the bar patrons. I let myself in, heads turned. Three customers nursed afternoon beers. An aging bartender with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth glared at me as he ran a towel over empty glasses.
“Ain’t you a little young to be in here?” he asked. Over his shoulder a stuffed raccoon hung from a noose.
“Looking for Russell,” I said. My gaze fixed on the noose.
“We don’t serve his kind here.”
The patrons went back to watching TV.
I eyed the empty tables along the wall. To my left, the jukebox flashed for attention. A tired pool table stood between the jukebox and the bar. “What kind do you serve?”
He set the glass down. “I don’t serve little piss ants. Get out of here before I throw you ass first onto the street.”
“Have to catch me first you old fuck.”
The patron’s attention was back to me and the bartender. “Better watch it boy,” the nearest customer warned. “Ole Luther here,” he nodded at the bartender, “likes your type. You might make an old man happy.” The customers laughed.
“I never forget a face,” the bartender said hobbling towards me.
“Faggots!” I yelled. Laughter erupted behind me as I ran out of Giorgio’s. I continued down Main Street until I came to JD’s Tavern.
I walked in. Russell sat at the end of the horseshoe shaped bar. The bartender was busy making time with a barfly. “Hey Russell,” I said.
Turning on his stool he appeared to look me over from behind his sunglasses. He removed the cigar from his mouth and blew a plume of smoke into stale air, “Do I know you?” he asked, his voice sandpaper.
“I’m James. I’m…”
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” he said slapping a knee. “I remember now. You’re Butterfly’s little friend. What can I do for you?” He inhaled his Dutch Master.
“I was wondering if you could help me?”
“What could a broken feller like me do for you?” He laughed, bringing on a fit of phlegmy coughs. He reached for the shot glass next to his beer mug. He belted it down. He pounded his fist against his chest. “Stuff is good for what ails ya.”
The bartender wandered over and refilled Russell’s shot glass. “He’s got to go.”
“Get the boy a Coke,” Russell said. “We’re going to take a seat at a table.”
The bartender sighed and followed Russell’s instructions. “Here boy, help an old man and carry his beer.”
“What are you doing?” The bartender called. “If the L.C.B. walks in they’ll close me down.”
“I don’t see no L.C.B. man,” Russell said.
“Boy put that back on the bar,” the bartender instructed. “Russell! You blind fool, your more trouble than your worth.”
“Then you bring me my beer,” he told the bartender.
Russell covered the distance between his stool and the table without his cane. Mom was right, he does smell like rotten eggs, I thought as Russell sat across from me.
“Now where were we?” he asked.
“I need to ask you something.”
“About?”
The bartender arrived with our drinks, slamming them down on the table before retreating behind the bar. I told him what happened last night.
“Son,” he pushed ashes around the ashtray with the tip of his stogy. “This is an interesting story, but what is it you want to know?”
“What’s going on?
“Ask your friends?”
“They won’t tell me.”
The old man shrugged. “They’ll tell you if they see fit.”

“Byrne’s gang got hit again,” Steve Lucas told me in homeroom Monday morning.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Have you seen Mike Manson? Dude. He looks like he ran the one hundred-yard dash in a fifty-yard gym. Somebody rearranged his face.”
“Who?”
“Whoever got the other two. But I don’t think so,” Steve said.
“Why not?”
“My old man says the Manson’s are fucked up. Manson’s old man is a mean drunk who’s uses his family as punching bags.”
Bingo, that voice, it was Manson. That’s who Count pounded at Shannie’s house. Why would Manson show up at the Ortolans? Why would his appearance cause such a ruckus? He had to have known Count would have been there. He had balls or he’s stupid.
The optimism my class felt when Nugent’s head bionked his locker transformed into joy with Mike Manson’s facial rearrangement. It was great watching the self-proclaimed Ayatollahs of the Junior Higha go down one by one. Many people breathed a sigh of relief.
When I got home the good news continued - my mother told me Granddad was coming to visit.
“No Shit!”
“James. I never heard such language from you.”
“I’m sorry. Great. When’s he coming?”
“The Monday before Thanksgiving.”
“Yes! For how long?”
“Until the baby is born.”
“Holy shit!”
“James!” My mother shook her head.
“He’ll be here for Christmas. I don’t believe it. Fucking A!”
“James. I know you’re excited. But please watch your language. You aren’t the same boy he’ll be expecting. Your new vocabulary will shock him!”
“ I’m sorry. This is fu- f-in insane,” Jumping up and down, I hugged my mother.

Over the following weeks I was as miserable as ever. Shannie had gone on a trip with her school. Football season ended. Jenny Wade still did not get the hint – in Shannie’s absence she wasn’t as annoying. I was bored with schoolwork, but mostly, I was impatient about my grandfather’s arrival. My only escape was early morning workouts in the weight room.
A week before Thanksgiving, Beyford was threatened by a freak early season snowfall. The buzz at school said five inches. Electricity filled the air; excitement owned me. I had never experienced a snow storm. Judging by the way people acted in the grocery store, I got the impression snow was akin to nuclear war.
“It’s always like this,” the checkout lady told my mother. “People are insane. They hear snow and they stampede the grocery store. You’d think the Russian’s were coming.”
By nightfall, the snow hadn’t begun. I retired to my bedroom. Bored, I flipped through an old Sport’s Illustrated Swim Suit Issue before taking another look. I shut my lights off and sat on my perch. In the glow of the streetlights in front of Fernwood, a light snow fell. I was transfixed. Diane’s bedroom light broke my spell.
My eyes darted towards the light. Diane studied her reflection in the mirror before lighting candles. Laughing, she looked towards the bedroom door. She disappeared into her walk-in closet. She reemerged in lingerie. Holy shit, I thought. Again she stood in front of her mirror and brushed her golden hair. She sat the brush down, swayed to the doorway and shut off the light. Reflections of candlelight flickered upon the walls. My heart raced. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Lucky fucker, I thought.
I ran through the Rolodex in my mind, trying to figure out who I should be envying. I knew Diane dated, though I never met anyone. Shannie said Diane dated mostly stuffed shirts – she never brings anyone home. The suspense was better than the Super Bowl. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Diane appeared in the doorway, hand in hand with her lover. “What the…?” I said aloud. My focus struggled against the snow and candlelight. At the foot of her bed Diane embraced her lover; they kissed before Diane led Ms. Horne, my algebra teacher, onto her bed.
“Holy shit,” I yelled.
“What’s the matter?” my mother asked from downstairs.
“You should see her, it snowing. It’s a blizzard.”
“That’s nice,” she said - uninterested.
Unfucking-believable; wait till everyone hears about this. I ran downstairs and called Count.
“Hi Flossy, is Count home?” I asked.
“Him and the old man are busy hooking up the plow.”
“Can you have him call me when they’re done?”
“They’ll be out just about all night. Once they get it hooked up they’re planning on plowing. They’ll be done in the morning.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Get some rest,” my dad ordered after I hung up. “You’ve got some shoveling to do tomorrow.”
I closed my bedroom door and rushed to the window. The candlelight provoked my imagination. I fell asleep sitting in my perch, dreaming of happenings beyond eyeshot. Then the strangest thing happened, or maybe it didn’t – maybe it was a dream: my father woke me and told me to crawl into bed. Tucking me in he kissed my forehead: “I love you son.”
The next morning, I got into a snowball fight with my dad. After digging out his car and watching it slip and slide down Cemetery Street, my excitement waned. The cold air stung my face as I struggled with the heavy snow. I stopped, taking a quick break. Diane stared at me from behind her front storm door. Guilt rushed over me. When she saw that I noticed her, she opened the door and asked if I would shovel her driveway and front walk.
“Sure,” I said.
“Stop in when you’re finished.”
Sitting at Diane’s kitchen table, her teapot screaming on the stove, I agonized that she knew I saw Ms. Horne. “The last time I saw your face so red, I asked if you remembered to put down the toilet seat,” Diane teased. I blushed again. “James,” she said placing a boiling cup of hot chocolate in front of me. “I owe you an explanation.”
“About?” My heart skipped a beat, I pictured last night. I thought of Ms. Horne - how was I going to look her in the eye?
“About Halloween night,” she answered. She blew into her hot chocolate as she sat down.
“The Manson thing?”
“The Manson thing. You should know why we acted the way we did. I despise violence,” she sighed. “But I felt vindicated when Leroy,” she paused again; searching for the right words. “Well, when he kicked Manson’s ass. I would have