Read Walking That Short Distance, Childhood Enlightenment in the '50s Page 4

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  Darkness filled the bedroom except for cracks of light around the doorframe. Michael heard faint voices coming from the bedroom next to theirs and the sounds of adult laughter from the kitchen. They were in New Mexico visiting his father's family. The bed was crowded. His older brother and cousin were lying next to him, talking about girls. Michael pretended to sleep.

  "Well, Greg Hess down the street says he kissed her once, but he says he does a lot of things to girls that I don't believe."

  "God, she's so pretty, I would probably faint dead away if I got close enough to kiss her."

  "You ever kissed a girl?"

  "Well, we had a party at this kid's house once, and they stuck me and this girl in a closet together. We didn't really know what we were supposed to do so we just kinda rubbed our lips together. But she wasn't good looking or nothing."

  "Me and one of the girls that lives over on Mercy Street, we went out to her old shed where they used to keep chickens, and before I knew it, she pulled off her panties for me, but I told her that I wasn't going for that kinda stuff. She kissed me twice on the cheek and I left. If her mother would have caught us, she would have killed me for sure."

  "Well, I don't believe in that stuff myself. You think you will ever do it?"

  "No. Not unless it's for a reason."

  Not unless it's for a reason. Those words burned into Michael's mind. A reason. The Reason, he thought. They were still talking but he was no longer listening. So that's the way people make babies. His eyes were wide open in the dark. Thoughts were coming to him, arranging and reinterpreting the events of his life. It all made a nightmarish sense. That's the way you make babies. Everybody who has kids has done it. Everybody. How could that be? That was not a proper thing for nice people to be doing. His mother had told him so many times.... His mind was already off on its own, formulating a list. Uncle Eugene and Aunt Martha. Uncle Weldon and Aunt Madeline. Oh my God! Mother and Daddy. But Mother told me.... After all she told me. But it was true. He knew it was true. He had a vision of his mother and father in bed together and his father putting his "thing" inside her. He would bet she liked it too. He wondered if his father's thing look like the bull's? He was horrified. He rolled over facing the wall. Boyd and Janette. Shirley and Ray. Gerald and Linda. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Frank. Grandmother and Granddad. Mr. Wilks, the butcher, and his wife. And that nice couple Daddy rented the farmland from. And that Senator that came with his wife and kids to speak in the park last year. And the President. How could the President? And then there's my favorite cousin Ellen who just married ugly old Tom Shank. Heard them say the other day they were trying to have a baby. I guess now I know what "trying" means. How could Mother and Daddy do that? And there's.....

  Sleep.

  Then awake. The school principal, Mr. Hanson and his wife Mildred. Jake the barber, and he's been married four times. Oh Lord! And old Cletis Skinner and that ugly wife of his, and they got twelve kids. Well, you might expect it of them. So this is what the artificial inseminator and all that was about.