Taft Read Free

you everything but it didn't have to since it was all right there. We were sitting on the back steps of her parents' house, splitting a Coke because there was only one left. She was wearing cutoffs and a yellow halter top and she looked as good as any girl I'd ever seen. She hadn't gotten all dressed up or taken me away someplace secret to tell me. There was nothing to be ashamed about. Marion's face didn't have a worry on it. It said, I love you and you love me and all of this is going to be fine.
    And that was the thing that made me turn on her.
    It wasn't the news itself. It was something about the way she looked at me, like she knew I would never disappoint her, that made me want to disappoint her badly. This is called being stupid and cruel. This is being twenty-five and a drummer in a band when there are plenty of pretty girls who aren't pregnant asking for your time. I had been faithful to Marion because she was right, I loved her. But I didn't need her. It was her need of me that made me turn cruel.
    So what would have happened if I had acted like the people on television? Picked her up and kissed her. Set her down in an old lawn chair all nervous and put a pillow up under her feet. What if I had rested the side of my face against the yellow halter top that barely covered her stomach and just held it there for a minute. Where would we be now? Marion and I keep no secret store of love for each other, I will promise you that. Everything that was kind between us we killed with years of dedication and hard work. When I hang up the phone with her now it's hard to imagine that one tender word has ever passed between us. I find myself thinking that we must have been drunk or stoned during any minute we were happy together.
    She tried to stay close to me when she was pregnant. She didn't know what else to do. I guess she wanted to be there in case I wised up. Some days I was good to her and some days I wasn't. I picked up a few other girls on the side. I started taking myself seriously, talking big. I gave her money, but I made her ask for it. I never said one word about marrying her. She was my own fat shadow, getting bigger and bigger as she trailed along behind me. Every time I made her crazy and she wanted to light into me, she bit down hard and kept quiet about it. She was trying to hold on to her old sweet self. Marion had a clear idea about what kind of girl she wanted to be, no trouble, not one who complained no matter how badly she was treated. I can see her clear as day, coming to the bar in the hot late afternoons while the new band practiced. She'd sit at a table drinking ice water with her legs stretched over two chairs. She never looked like she was listening, never said anything about the music one way or the other. She was just making the effort to put herself in front of me. She had to leave her parents' cool house after working all day and ride a crowded bus downtown, not to talk to me or be with me, but just to sit in front of me in an empty bar so I wouldn't forget she was going to have my baby.
    Franklin came sooner than anyone thought he would. I was playing at the Rum Boogie. When the manager told me at break that it was Marion on the phone I didn't take the call. She didn't tell him she was having the baby and I didn't think of it, a whole month early. Later, it came out that she was standing at a pay phone in the hospital lobby, having contractions and waiting on the line because no one went back to tell her I wasn't coming. She stood there listening, waiting for me to pick up until her legs just gave out on her. That pretty much explains my name not being featured on the birth certificate.

    A visit to the nursery may not be Paul's road to Damascus: I was a bad man before I saw and a good man after, but it's something like that. Children get right to the point. I've known solid men to take off straight away in the face of their sons. I've known men you'd think were bad, hustlers and junkies, who