Long Bridge Runner

Chapter 69-Spring

Copyright 1995
By David Rojay

THE LONG BRIDGE RUNNER
Book One/THE MIDWEST

Spring came on like a parade; there were crocuses and daffodils and tulips and dogwood blossoms and cherry blossoms and finally the leaves of great oak trees and maple trees and sycamores. The evenings were warm and the rain was warm and the birds sang and the frogs croaked so loud they could be heard on Main Street. People who had been frozen, made love and girls in shorts could be seen, and the Town Band played on the Courthouse green; from the gazebo they played song after song and the throng clapped along until they played excerpts from South Pacific which delighted Kimberly and Gurion and the band director announced that "someone here today actually saw South Pacific on Broadway" and he asked Kimberly and Gurion to stand amidst loud applause.

Daniel was there and "Aunt" Henrietta was there and Molly had come in from Scottsville where the lilac trees were abloom; and Glenn and Dorothy were there sitting in Glenn's parked car. Everyone was there and everyone clapped along to Stars and Stripes Forever.

Not far away, Veterans in the park drilled for Memorial Day and all over town people could hear the band as they worked in their yards or sat on their porches. The air was filled with the smell of cut grass. Life was sweet, thought Daniel as he watched his "cousin", Wendy, walk his way. She was strikingly beautiful in her red shorts and white blouse, her black hair tossing from side to side. Of course, she wasn't really his cousin, she was Cecil Monroe's daughter, the first girl he had seen naked when he was only one year old; and since then she had been his off and on babysitter. She sat down beside him and kissed his forehead and called him "sweetie pie".

Daniel remembered that only one year before, he had been hospitalized in St. Louis-so much pain-but now he sat beside Wendy and smelled her perfume.

In the spring of 1950 the mood of Fairhaven was full of hope. Midwestern towns like Fairhaven did not have the roots of New England villages or southern encampments-these towns sat upon the prairie tentatively, anchored only by faith and optimism. A tornado could blow them away in minutes and the people who lived in them knew that and put their trust-not in history or traditions-but directly in God. Therefore the denizens of these places had to be good and think good and do good. This was the magic of the place. This is why the people who lived there thought they lived in the best part of America-the very center of the universe; and the proof of this was the squeaky cleanness of the place.

Of course, there were the Communists to worry about; they had taken over China and were trying to take over Korea and according to Senator McCarthy, they were trying to take over America; but there were none in Fairhaven-or were there?

The change of weather is a time of migration-a flock of guinea hens returned to Scottsville and the prairie was dotted with Canadian Geese, all the seasonal birds returned. Alligator Gar traveled north in the Mississippi and people were moving too. Gurion and Kimberly had made the decision to spend the summer on Cape Cod. Dr. Boggs would care for most of Gurion's practice with the help of another German doctor named Nurinberger. Glenn would accept an offer from Sam Warner to move to Evansville and become field manager in the Tri-State Oil Company (Indiana, Kentucky and Southern Illinois) and Wendy Monroe would go to Hollywood; she was eighteen and had starred in the high school production of Finian's Rainbow.

When she sang "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" her sweet soprano tugged at each question in the lyrics-tenderly and with yearning.

Rapturous applause was her reward.

This beautiful daughter of Cecil Monroe had been hired one more time to look after Daniel, even though Glenn said that Daniel was too old for a babysitter. That day she playfully wrestled with him and straddled him while he was on the floor and unzipped his trousers and held him in her hand and pulled her red panties to one side to show a shock of black pubic hair and he felt her come down around him as if she were a tight ring descending and then there was wetness, gushy wetness and tingling and burning and squirting and with the squirting her shrieks of, "Oh, my God, Oh, my God." He could still hear her screams when she was in the bathroom, "Oh, my God, Oh, my God." In the weeks that followed, he avoided her and refused to have her baby-sit and crossed the street when he ran into her downtown; this was the little drama of Wendy and Daniel.

In the weeks after the band concert, Gurion took Kimberly to the Flower Farm in Mill Shoals where they walked through fields of blossoms. "Everything growing here," said Gurion, "was brought out of China by an Englishman named Wilson. He's the botanist that discovered the Regal Lily and he bought out fifteen hundred samples of flowers that grew in the Hung Dwang Mountains. These mountains are the original birthplace of most flowers. For example, rhododendrons-while there are thirty varieties in Europe and America, there are hundreds of varieties in the Hung Dwang."

"So you're telling me that most of these flowers are Chinese flowers?" said Kimberly.

"That's right. Every-day flowers that we take for granted came out of China. Here's a very unusual one," said Gurion as he bent down and showed Kimberly a Mandragora.

While Kimberly studied the Mandragora, Gurion spotted Cannabis growing nearby. "What's that?" asked Kimberly.

"Oh, it's just a weed," said Gurion dismissively; but Gurion read all the literature and he knew that in Jerusalem, Rafael Mechoulam was doing research on marijuana. He had isolated its active ingredient-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

Gurion bent down and showed Kimberly the female component of the plant. "This is where the resin is produced. It's like a byproduct of the plant's sexuality."

Kimberly began to laugh.

"Don't laugh," said Gurion, "that's what flowers are; they're the sexual components of plants. They're beautiful on purpose so that they can attract pollinators--bees and other insects. See here," he said opening a tulip, "the stamens are male and the pistils are female and their allure is nectar."

Kimberly was laughing even harder now. "How do you know all this, Isaac? You have so many little lectures inside of you." And even though she laughed, this quality of Gurion's filled her with warm affection.

Glenn was occupied with a different kind of plant (the post-war popularity of French fried potatoes) and he showed his father how to plant the spuds that would produce the elongated Russet Burbank. "You see, dad," he said, "a machine can slice two dozen super long French fries out of a potato like this," and in order to demonstrate, he took two large Russets into the Reeves' kitchen and sliced them and deep-fried them in melted Crisco. When they had cooled sufficiently, father and son sat down to a feast of French fries and ketchup.

As for Wendy Monroe, she went through all the dresses in her closet (and there were as many as a spoiled girl could own) and picked out just a few-one suitcase full. Things would be different from now on she knew. Her father was against her trip and though she suspected her mother might help her from time to time, there would be no checks traveling from Fairhaven to Hollywood. But in addition to her beauty, she was brave and she took a deep breath standing in front of the mirror. She had, in her purse and hidden in a slender money belt-two hundred dollars. She cupped her hands underneath her ample breasts and looked down and said to them, "If push comes to shove, you little babies will have to come through," and she meant it.

Then she lifted her suitcase and began the walk to the Greyhound Bus Station. It was there that Daniel nearly ran into her. She was too close for him to flee and she sat her suitcase down, walked over and held him in a fierce embrace, kissing his face and his ears and his forehead. "I won't forget you, sweetie pie," she said, "you'll always be my first lover." And then she was gone---and left him standing---all alone---and crying*.

*From a lyric by Roy Orbison
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