One Mississippi Read Online Free Page B

Hershey’s syrup, and watching Johnny Carson. “You get to pick your specialty. I could learn to fly a helicopter, or electronics. All kind of things.”
    “Buddy, you can’t leave me to cut all this grass by myself!”
    “Sorry, brother. You knew I was never gonna make it down here.”
    “I could go with you,” I said. “I could say I’m eighteen too.”
    “First off, who would believe that, and anyway, Dad would come after you and kill you. No Danny, you gotta stick it out like I did.”
    “You’ve only been here a couple of months. I’ve got two whole
years
until I graduate.”
    “Think about poor Janie. She’s got, what, five years in this dump? If Dad doesn’t get transferred again.” Bud licked his spoon. “You’ll both turn into total rednecks, you watch. You’re already starting to talk like them.”
    “No I ain’t.” I grinned. “Dadgummit!”
    Three days later it was time for Bud to go to Parris Island. Dad didn’t want any scenes at the bus station, so we had our scene in the driveway at home. Mom cried. Janie ran wailing into the house. I swallowed my grief and stared at the new seed heads poking up from the grass we had mowed just the day before. “Come back soon, Buddy,” I said.
    He turned my hug into a handshake and finished it off with a slap on the back. “Take care, brother. And stay out of my room. Mom? Make sure he stays out.”
    No need to worry: that room would become a shrine to Bud the Departed. Only Mom would be allowed in that room, to dust and to weep over his wrestling trophies. A perfectly good TV would sit in there going to waste, on the chance that someday Bud might come back and want to watch it.
    Bud had always been my best friend. We grew up together. He learned how to do everything first, then taught me how. I would miss him so much, but I wasn’t going to be such a baby as to cry about it.
    Anyway I had another friend now. Tim Cousins. All you really need is one.

3
    E VERY SATURDAY NIGHT Tim and I watched
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour
over the phone, Tim in his house in town, me sprawled in our family room out on Buena Vista Drive.
    “Sonny Bono is so grotesque,” Tim said. “Why do you think she ever married him? He’s not handsome, not funny, he can’t carry a tune. He pretends to be making fun of himself, but actually he thinks he’s so smart for marrying a meal ticket like Cher. Look at that smirk.”
    “Maybe he’s got a big wingwang,” I said.
    “But God, he’s so queer! Would you look at that nasty mustache . . . it’s like one of those vacuum cleaner attachments you use to clean upholstery. I bet he gets food and stuff caught in it all the time. I bet it gets all sopping with Cher’s vulvular juices.”
    “God, Tim, gross me out why don’t you?”
    “Wait wait wait,” he said, fumbling the phone. “Here comes her solo.”
    At some point in every show, Cher would emerge in an outrageous Bob Mackie costume to sing a torchy ballad. Cher was skinny with no boobs to speak of, but Bob Mackie cut her gowns on dramatic angles to create the illusion of boobs. Each week we waited to see how Bob would surpass the previous week’s spectacular — a blinding curtain of red sparkles, a beaded lime-green wraparound thing with a skullcap, a thatch of springy wires with little balls on the end. This week Cher was the center of an explosion of white feathers, perched on a swing in a giant birdcage, a stuffed Dove of Peace mounted in her hair. She looked fabulous and absurd on her bird-swing, singing a throaty ballad, “Your Love Is Like a Golden Cage.”
    Tim’s laugh was sharp and startling, like a terrier’s bark. “Ha! Look at that! Incredible!”
    “I must say, I am speechless.”
    “Looks like that dove is about to crap on her head.”
    “That’s
just
what I was thinking!”
    Tim said, “So listen, have you given any thought to the prom?”
    My heart tugged downward in my chest. Tim had a way of lobbing in these big hand-grenade