{"id":7733,"date":"2014-12-12T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=7733"},"modified":"2014-12-16T13:20:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T18:20:45","slug":"privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/privilege\/","title":{"rendered":"Privilege"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"privilege\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A kid named Mike Scully from the low-income Prospect Heights area sparked Art Foster\u2019s interest in Anna. Mike idolized Art and started the ball rolling when he whispered that she was the most beautiful girl in Rhode Island and maybe the world. He was a jumpy kid, always pacing, rocking or twitching, constantly talking about a lightweight fighter named Jackie Weber. Mike\u2019s family lived in the apartment where Jackie had grown up. Scully wanted to be a Marine. A homemade tattoo of a snake on his arm looked like a worm. The dagger it wrapped around was a sad likeness. The \u201cN\u201d in HONOR was backwards. \u00a0Whenever Art pitched Pony League ball, Mike was in the stands cheering as if he were his brother. Art thought he might be gay until he revealed his love for Anna.<\/p>\n

Art\u2019s father was in real estate, and they lived in Countryside, the best place to live in Pawtucket, RI. Mike was an outcast no matter how you looked at him. The Heights kids scorned him because he went to a Catholic School, St. Teresa\u2019s, instead of\u00a0Goff Junior High. The St. Teresa\u2019s kids dismissed him because of his home in the Heights.<\/p>\n

One night, Art stole a car and picked up Mike at May\u2019s Bakery, a loitering spot for Heights types. Mike pointed out Anna leaning against the wall, cigarette in hand. Her hair was long and bleached. Her jacket was black, jeans faded. A transistor radio kissed one ear. She turned briefly to exhibit her fine ass.\u00a0 Art swallowed hard then took Mike for a ride down a long, lightly traveled road that passed a pig farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll fly you past those swine so fast you\u2019ll miss the smell, faster than the speed of stink,\u201d he told Mike. Art pushed the speedometer to 105 and emboldened his hero status in Mike\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

Art\u2019s first and only encounter with Anna took place a month later, a couple of days after Mike got the living shit kicked out of him. Mike had been hanging out on a corner in the Heights when a couple of older guys said loud enough for them to hear, \u201cSlut\u2019s too good a word for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike had responded, \u201cAsshole\u2019s too good a word for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

After hot-wiring a red Ford Victoria at the Fram Corp. parking lot, Art headed for Beverage Hill Avenue. He pulled up by Anna as she walked across the street from the Heights to her hangout spot in front of the bakery.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know me but you\u2019d like to.\u00a0 I\u2019m a good friend of Mike Scully\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat and a nickel will get you a day old chocolate donut at May\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be so sassy doing 110 on Pig Street.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, punk car thief, you\u2019re not talking to a new house, goody-goody girl.\u201d She jumped in, scrunched her long legs, and propped her feet against the dashboard. She switched the radio station to an echo chamber, big mouth DJ. He played Del Shannon\u2019s \u201cRunaway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speed didn\u2019t slow her wisecracks. She egged him on, \u201cSnap the speedometer cable!\u201d He tried but was at the A&W after hitting just 112. He bought her root beer and onion rings. She left half behind. After embarrassing him into leaving too large a tip, she suggested a ride to Newport. When they crossed over the Mt. Hope Bridge, she was like a little kid, wondering how many people had jumped. Art figured it was her first time out of Pawtucket. \u201cYou\u2019ll probably leave the world in a splash the day before your sentencing for all your felonies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou gonna rat me out underprivileged project girl?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might be privileged to be blackmailed by a Heights girl, Criminal Creep!\u201d<\/p>\n

He heard, \u201cwow\u201d after \u201cwow\u201d while showing her the mansions. He pulled over to let her out to run on the lawn of one. She did somersaults. He had beach-walking on his mind. She told him forget it: it was a corny new-house thing to do, and the waves were too puny anyway. Art imagined her ass grinding into the sand, the sea caressing their nakedness, decorating her with shells of strange shapes matching star formations like on a robe a stripper wore at the F.E.I. Club before dropping it on the stage to dance.<\/p>\n

Art remembered drinking wine on the beach one night with his friend Higgy.\u00a0 They saw sex not twenty yards away \u2013 sailor was screwing a gal like he was going off to battle and she was Uncle Sam\u2019s anti-war daughter. He left his white hat behind. Higgy made a big deal out of the name stenciled on it, \u201cMelville.\u201d He gave Art a nutshell Moby Dick<\/em>. Art added there was nothing \u201cMoby\u201d about that sailor. Higgy was brainy but his gray matter didn\u2019t mean law-abiding. Their biggest triumph was breaking into a big house on Blackstone Boulevard. It was a snap, a couple of hundred bucks to split and a heavy gold ring with a pearl on its face surrounded by 5 diamond chips was claimed by Art.\u00a0 Inscribed inside was \u201cMr. Sand Wedge.\u201d \u00a0Higgy wasn\u2019t interested in the ring or its pawn value.\u00a0 He took a Siamese kitten he later traded for a piece of ass from a former Central Falls\u00a0mayor\u2019s niece.<\/p>\n

Anna ordered Art back to Pawtucket and the projects. She directed him to stop near a man-made pond called Jacques Dunnell\u2019s that the city filled every summer. It pretty much belonged to Heights kids; outsiders feared disease, regardless of the amount of chlorine dumped in daily. Anna was banned one summer for helping Bobby Howard push over a lifeguard chair, scaring the living shit out of a star high school quarterback twirling his whistle on a lanyard. Art knew that outsiders regarded it as the largest toilet in Rhode Island but he wasn\u2019t about to tell her. Art\u2019s brother had been a lifeguard there. He was an All-State swimmer.<\/p>\n

She took his hand as soon as they left the car, hurried him to a cave-like orifice where the pumped-in pond water drained.\u00a0 It was located in some sparse woods. She offered to take him on a tour, an honor few new-house guys get she said. He silently snickered to himself. At the entrance, she pointed out a mulberry tree in the moonlit distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve climbed to the top of that and pissed into the wind. I\u2019ve walked in these woods barefooted over rocks and burrs; no new-house bitch could.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m impressed,\u201d laughed Art. She punched him hard in the arm.<\/p>\n

They crawled about twenty-five feet on hands and knees to a point where they could stand. Anna pulled a candle from a crevice in the rock wall. Lighting it, she led him to a mattress resting in soft beach sand. Initials covered the walls and ceiling. Art imagined her putting theirs inside a slim rectangle like a stick of dynamite, man-oh-man. He jumped when he heard something bang.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think there\u2019s someone in here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShit, 112 on Pig Street, and you\u2019re shaking in your boots! Ha! Or are you wearing Hush-Puppies? A little farther you\u2019re under Prospect Street. A car hit a manhole cover. You\u2019ll hear it again, precious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot scared, just wouldn\u2019t want us to get crushed in a cave-in.\u201d Anna rolled her eyes.<\/p>\n

Anna was his second sex partner. The first was an escapee from the girls\u2019 reform school in Cranston who\u2019d taken on him and six other guys in the freezing dugout at McCoy Stadium. Even though he\u2019d been the first in line, it was uncomfortable, and he felt guilty taking advantage of her situation. She told him he was the first train boy to bother sucking her tits.<\/p>\n

Anna casually undressed and all he did was drop jeans and underwear. He felt like a jerk, wished he had her cool, calm and collected poise. He was in Fantasyland. In all his fifteen years he\u2019d never imagined a girl moving and moaning like Anna, running her fingers through his hair, whispering, \u201cArt, Art,\u201d like his name was part of a rock and roll song or he was on a stage singing one. She held him so tight it seemed as though she was trying to weld herself to him, such was the degree of heat. Nuns talking about filling up with sanctifying grace flashed in his mind. He filled her right full, he would brag later. He worried as much about a kid as he did about cops catching him in a hot car.<\/p>\n

When they finished she clung to him. He panicked, imagining he\u2019d been set up \u2013 Heights kids waiting to attack, Anna smashing his head with a rock. He pictured a truck accident above, oil rushing in, drowning them. What if he knocked her up?\u00a0 Thinking about Countryside and his parents, he pushed her away, pulled up his pants, crawled away like a whipped dog. Looking back once, he saw her on all fours in the candlelight. Was she smiling in triumph? He bumped his head scooting out and saw stars. As he drove the Ford back to the Fram Corp., he concluded that his bravery was limited to car theft and burglary. He skidded at a stop sign he usually ran, and it was a good thing, as there was a cop parked nearby. That bitch could\u00a0ruin\u00a0him. Yet every time he rested his eyes in school or any-damned-where, his nostrils filled with the flower shop smell of her hair,\u00a0the tobacco taste of her mouth and lips, and her uninhibited, confident voice. He could feel her arms and legs clamped on him like pythons, or vines, or a wrestler\u2019s scissor hold. Her tits, slightly larger than baseballs,\u00a0boasted remarkable nipples his tongue could not forget. He bet one could support Mr. Sand Wedge.\u00a0 His fingers argued up and down a stolen gold fountain pen calculating the rare wonder and dimension of them.<\/p>\n

Art went to five colleges before he finally completed two years. His father\u2019s connections kept him out of Vietnam but not Higgy, who was killed by small arms fire. Art had his obituary laminated and kept it in a cigar box with Mr. Sand Wedge. Hell, without the help of Higgy the Brain, he would never have graduated from St. Raphael\u2019s Academy. Daddy tried to set him up in real estate, but houses weren\u2019t sold in barrooms and lounges. He took a stab at computer sales, but that led to a brush with the law when he pocketed a down payment of five thousand. His father bailed him out. Art was a gambler, would bet on just about anything, except what day, week, month or year he would kick the habit.<\/p>\n

One day, out of the black and blue of a beating over poker-cheating, he broke free\u00a0\u2013 free like Anna seemed to be. Drinking away the hurt and embarrassment at Rock\u2019s Bar, he met a golf hustler who boasted that he\u2019d once taken Arnold Palmer for a couple of grand. Bullshit or not, Art wondered if he possessed some country club talent. He was built for it, he thought: six-four, wavy, black hair and maybe handsome in a jock sort of way. A week later, he was spending more time at driving ranges and putting greens in South Attleboro than at watering holes. He could drive a ball a mile but was erratic with the rest of the game.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t hamper his hustling. He\u2019d challenge anyone to a driving contest; sometimes spotted them 10 or 15 yards. He made a name for himself around the ranges and a couple of nine-hole courses. A fertilizer salesman Art knew from Rock\u2019s approached him at\u00a0a nine-hole night course called Firefly. He told Art that Wannamoisett was looking for an assistant pro who could help some of the members with their tee shots. The head pro saw Art crank one like a missile shot and that was that. It was the first time he\u2019d gotten a job without his father\u2019s help.\u00a0 He wished Higgy were around just in case and chuckled remembering the ring, sort of a prophecy.<\/p>\n

One morning, three weeks into the job, Art walked to the rail overlooking the golf cart garage to count the warm bodies in the caddy shack.\u00a0 Among the teens, he spotted Anna and Mike. It had been six years. She blew him a kiss.\u00a0 Mike tipped his Red Sox cap.\u00a0 They were disheveled and overweight, smoking and holding cans of beer. Art returned to the pro shop to compose himself.\u00a0 After he spent a half-hour distracted with panic, the first foursome of the day was ready to go. No way to get around picking two caddies.\u00a0 Sweaty from head to tasseled loafers, he rushed to the rail. \u00a0The intruders were gone.\u00a0 He breathed several sighs of relief and repeated them throughout the eternal day.\u00a0 The last golfers were finished at seven. Unwinding at Rock\u2019s like old times would be heaven.\u00a0 Rushing to the parking lot after locking the pro shop, he froze. The green Thunderbird convertible his parents bought him to celebrate his employment success was gone, replaced with a beat up Chevy Impala two tires were flat. \u00a0Mike\u2019s childhood tattoo was spray painted on the driver side door. \u00a0The \u201cN\u201d in \u201cHONOR\u201d was correct. It was larger than its mates were.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Thomas Michael McDade is a former computer programmer (wrote and maintained software used in the wholesale \/ retail plumbing supply field) living in Fredericksburg, VA with his wife, no kids, no pets. He is a graduate of Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. He served two hitches in the U.S. Navy. McDade’s short fiction has most recently appeared in The Heater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A kid from the projects named Mike Scully sparked Art Foster\u2019s interest in Anna. Mike idolized Art and started the ball rolling when he whispered that she was the most beautiful girl in Rhode Island and maybe the world. He was a jumpy kid, always pacing, rocking or twitching, constantly talking about a lightweight fighter named Jackie Weber. Scully\u2019s family lived in the apartment where Jackie had grown up. Scully wanted to be a Marine. A homemade tattoo of a snake on his arm looked like a worm. The dagger it wrapped around was a sad likeness. The \u201cN\u201d in HONOR was backwards. Whenever Art pitched Pony League ball, Mike was in the stands cheering as if he were his brother. Art thought he might be gay until he revealed his love for Anna. <\/p>\n

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