Ticket to Ride Read Free

headlights. I turned to see a red MG pulling up just a few feet from us. David Raines, Linda’s husband, did his best James Bond by leaping over the car door and hurrying to us. “Linda! Wait!” But she was already running toward her father.
    â€œThis was a stupid goddamn idea, McCain. You can tell all the people on your stupid little committee that I said that.” He set off after his wife.
    I watched her rush across the lawn toward the rear entrance of the church. She was a small, finely made woman of thirty. She’d been a year ahead of me in high school. Her dark good looks made her popular despite her famous dark moods. I’d been told that her moods had calmed over the years, but not her intensity.
    She was gone into the shadows, leaving me to stand there and think about Lou Bennett and being forced to see him as a human being instead of a demon, which I resented. He’d spent his years promoting his friends to the city council and getting his way more often than not. I never forgave him for humiliating my father one night at a council meeting. I was twelve or thirteen. We lived in the poorest part of the city, the part called the Hills. My father wanted to know when a long-promised skating rink would be built for people on our side of town. He said, “It ain’t right to keep promising and not making good on it.” I was embarrassed; I still remember the shame I felt. And then I hated myself for feeling shame. My father had only gone through eighth grade in the Depression. He read a lot, but every so often an “ain’t” would slip out. Lou Bennett stood up in the front row and said, “Well, we sure ain’t going to break our word no more, Mr. McCain.” I imagined that my father could still hear the laughter of that night; I still could. It was one of those moments nobody but my father and I would remember. It was a moment I’d never forget.

2
    â€œY OU DON ’ T PUT SALT IN YOUR BEER ANYMORE, HUH ?”
    â€œNo, I read this article about salt intake.”
    Kenny Thibodeau, our town’s soft-core pornographer and writer of tall tales for men’s magazines, looked across the table and smiled. “I don’t have to tell you about ‘articles,’ do I?”
    â€œThis one’s legit, Kenny. By a doctor.”
    â€œI’m a doctor.”
    â€œYeah, of ‘sexology.’”
    When not writing books with titles such as Satan’s Sisters and Pagan Lesbians, or “true” articles such as “Hitler’s Love Maidens” and “The Wild Rampage of the Sex-Crazed Pirate Women!” Kenny writes a sex advice column under the name Dr. William Ambrose, “PhD and renowned Sexologist.” He cribs all his material from the Playboy Sex Advice column. His real name appears on none of this material. He’s saving that for the serious novels I know he has in him, though I’m not sure he himself knows that anymore. There’s one more reason for the pen names. J. Edgar Hoover and politically ambitious DAs across the country have been trying to send soft-core editors and writers to prison. Two publishers were already serving time. Their number-one target is comedian Lenny Bruce, of course. He was recently sentenced to jail again.
    â€œSo what happened at the demonstration tonight? I’d have been there except Sue had a doctor’s appointment in Iowa City and her car’s in the garage. I had to give her a ride.”
    In high school Kenny’s idols were Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He was messianic about the entire Beat movement. I was his only convert. I even subscribed to the Evergreen Review, which was the bible of the movement. One summer Kenny drove to the Beat Mecca, San Francisco, where he spent three days running in City Lights Bookstore. This was where he also met the soft-core publisher who convinced him he could make a reasonable living writing the stuff. Until two years ago