TEEN YEARS: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: CHAPTER 33 OF UNDERCOVER
67ANTI WAR MARCHES
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
I walked back into the classroom with confidence, casually tossing Ricky’s signed hall pass on the teacher’s desk. But things didn’t go as I had planned. Mrs. Clark wrinkled her nose, which was shaped kinda like a pig’s snout, and looked me straight in the eye. “This is not Mr. McDonald’s handwriting,” she said, somewhat happily, it seemed, to catch me in the act of yet another punishable offense.
I had to do some quick Robert Anderson style plea-bargaining, as well as a five-page book report on Crime and Punishment, to avoid having more serious punishment imposed on me. But even that wouldn’t have held a candle to the chewing out my soul sister got when we had a cross burned in our front yard.
I figured it might have had something to do with Ricky May, because Robert said he’d been arrested for being at a KKK Rally. Dad claimed to have supported George Wallace and Lester Maddox both, and he didn’t understand why anybody was burning a cross in his front yard, but mama said those KKK people were crazy, and you didn’t know what they might do. Dad said they weren’t that crazy, but Mama said Dad wouldn’t know, cause he didn’t even know anybody in the Klan.
My soul sister was going to student marches, and demonstrating for Civil Rights in downtown Atlanta. She marched against the war, and Dad said she was acting just like Jane Fonda, and was also acting like a communist. He said it was her fault the cross got burned out there, but I figured Ricky didn’t really hate blacks any more than he hated whites. He was just looking for a way to finally get to kill somebody.
My soul sister was real weird in a way, cause she was in all those marches, but she never used any drugs. When she first started marching in all those demonstrations, Robert asked if she believed in free love, but I didn’t much know. I doubted it, because my soul sister wouldn’t even have sex with her own boyfriend until after they got married. They got married when she was just nineteen, just so he could have sex, or at least that was what Robert guessed it was about. My soul sister transferred to Emory after she married that rich kid, and Dad said it was a liberal school. He said all they did at Emory was train people in Marxism. But my soul sister had been married for a long time when the cross got burned in our yard.
“America needs to be free for everybody,” my soul sister argued. “How can we call this the land of the free when people are going to jail for trying to eat in local restaurants.” She was so skinny, even though she never snorted cocaine to help her stay that way. I figured she did a lot of walking in those Anti War and Civil Rights marches. Janice and I had snorted cocaine a few times to get high, and lose a few pounds, but Robert didn’t know about it. He said he wasn’t into all that hard drug hippie stuff, and that I’d better stay away from Fat Cat and those guys. But we got the drugs from Janice’s brother.
“How can you call it free when a man no longer has the right to decide who can eat at his own restaurant? That’s what I want to know.” My Dad would shout, and his face would be just as red as a beat. My soul sister always had a come back, and they’d fight every time she came home.
“These drugs are going to be the ruin of this country,” my Dad kept saying whenever they’d get to fighting, but my soul sister didn’t defend drugs.
“Drugs are not what this is about,” she’d insist. “Drugs are destroying the integrity of the revolution. This is about the quality and preservation of life. Isn’t that what you always taught us?”
Dad didn’t much know how to handle that comment. He complained that my soul sister could always turn what he said around to make it look like he oughta be against the war, and for Civil Rights. “I taught you that murder was wrong, not fighting for our country.”
“It’s still killing,” she’d insist. “We don’t even know those people we’re killing over there, and they don’t know us. If you started shooting people over here like that, you’d get the chair for mass murder.”
My soul sister put a poster on her wall that said What if they had a war and nobody came. The more I thought about it, the more she seemed right. They couldn’t very well have a war, if nobody showed up over there. Still, I didn’t wanta stop getting high with Robert, so I just didn’t mention the drugs.
Dad kept blaming all those Anti War, and Civil Rights marches on hippies, but none of the real hippies I knew ever went to those marches. Fat Cat hung out in shopping center parking lots selling drugs, and those guys were usually too stoned to walk all that far, anyhow. Robert played football, but I wouldn’t really call Robert and Mark real hippies, anyway. Those guys just liked to get high without doing real drugs. They didn’t seem to have a problem with the establishment, whatever that was.
My soul sister even thought communism was okay, since the poor would have as much as the rich people did, and she kept right on going to those marches. Her and her husband, Lawrence, liked college so much, he even got a job as a college professor when he finally finished, but I was wondering for a while if he was ever going to finish, cause every time he’d graduate, he’d just start all over again at another school. Robert said he’d probably have to go to school that long to be a corporate lawyer like his dad, but it still seemed like a lot of school to me. Dad hadn’t gone to college at all.
Janice, the Indian Princess, as she was sometimes called, lived about four houses down the street from me. She lived about as close to me as Robert did to Alice. Her brother was being sent to Viet Nam. Since he wasn’t in college, and couldn’t afford to go, he had A-1 status with the army. He finally decided to just join up to avoid the draft. Janice and I were in their basement smoking grass with him, trying to cheer him up. She didn’t much know how her brother was going to fit in, once he got in the army, because he was a real hippie. He was pretty uptight too, and worried about having to get a haircut.
“I don’t mind defending my country,” he insisted, “but why do I have to have short hair?” John was not cute. It wouldn’t have mattered whether his hair was long or short, he still wouldn’t have been cool. He didn’t usually talk very much, and seemed moody. Janice said he was the drummer for a band, but his band never seemed to play anywhere. They just seemed to smoke grass, and drop a lot of acid. John seemed pretty weirded out a lot of the time.
We usually hung out in Janice’s basement, because her Dad was just another one of the neighborhood drunks. He worked in the middle of the night on an assembly line, and slept most of the day. He was drunk a lot of the time, just the same. Her mom worked at Sunshine’s Department Store, and was usually gone during the day. Janice said her dad beat her mom, but I never saw it. I didn’t much like him, because he tried to get me to sit in his lap one time, but I just tried to stay out of his way.
Janice told me she sassed her dad one time, and he told her to walk over to where he was at so he could hit er. She said her dad wasn’t all that smart. “You’d have to be a pure fool to walk over to where someone was sitting so they could hit you,” she said. “If he wants to hit me, he’s going to have to get sober enough to come over to where I’m at to do it.” Anyway, he didn’t usually come down to the basement, so that was where we hung out.
John was looking kinda sad about having to go off to the war and get a haircut, but he and Janice had also argued before I arrived. “You need to dump Jack,” he sneered. “He thinks you’re supposed to be his punching bag.”
“What?” I didn’t know what on earth John was talking about.
“Show her your arms and stomach,” John nagged Janice. “Jack uses her for a punching bag,” he said to me.
“John’s just making a big deal out of nothing,” Janice protested. “John, just shut your mouth!” She told her brother.
“Well, let Vandy see those bruises on your body, and see if she thinks it ain’t no big deal.”
Janice didn’t volunteer to let me see anything, but later that night when she was changing clothes, I noticed the bruises. Janice looked like she had been on a vacation with Ricky May. When she was in her panties, I could see dark bruises all over her body.
“Gosh, Janice,” I said frowning, “why do you let Jack hit you like that?”
She looked away from me. “He doesn’t do it all the time. He got mad because I was talking to Mark Redburn over at Fat Cat’s. He said Mark was a whore chasing jock who was trying to jump my bones.”
It sounded to me like Jack was trying to beat her bones, but I didn’t much want Janice to break up with Jack, because then she might get with Robert. “Does Jack shoot up?” I inquired.
“No. He just buys marijuana from Fat Cat, and does barbs sometimes.” She quickly grabbed a nightshirt and slipped it over her head to stop me from staring at her body. “Mark keeps telling me I oughta dump Jack and get with him.”
“Well, I think Mark has done that same thing before with somebody else,” I inform, but I didn’t mention that it was Alice Price. If I told Janice about Alice Price, Alice might tell Janice about me and Robert, so I figured it was best to leave Alice’s name out of it.
“Well, I can’t break up with Jack, anyway,” Janice explained, “because he’d kill me. And I’ve slept with Jack. I don’t want him going around telling people I’m a whore for being with someone else afterwards.”
The whore thing sure did get a lot of mileage. My soul sister said we were in a revolution, and women shouldn’t have to stay with men just because they were afraid of being called whores, but how would she know when she hadn’t even slept with her own boyfriend until after they were married? She never had to worry about being called a whore in the first place.
“Robert says Mark just uses girls for sex,” I inform.
“You sure seem to talk to Robert a lot,” Janice eyed me suspiciously, “When do you see him so much?”
I wished I hadn’t even mentioned Robert’s name, but I thought of something to say pretty quick. I was pretty good at lying. “That was way back when I was hanging out at Cheryl Lyles’ place,” I said. That seemed to satisfy her so I just didn’t mention Robert again that night.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IS CHAPTER 33 OF UNDERCOVER; TO READ PREVIOUS CHAPTERS CLICK LINK BELOW:
http://hubpages.com/_2pvzhao591xs4/hub/UNDERCOVER-SYNOPSIS-OF-MY-FIRST-NOVAL
TO CONTINUE READING, CLICK LINK BELOW:
http://hubpages.com/_2pvzhao591xs4/hub/COLLEGE-PREP-CHAPTER-34-OF-UNDERCOVER
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Yeah Charlie, and it makes me laugh to remember it. You also made honorable mention on my Sexy Guys who love their country hub. You might check it out, even though you may not be interested in sexy guys, the hub's a different approach to the 4th of July, and I get bored with tradition easily, in fact I get bored easily, period. thanks for commenting on my site. (:v
OK, I will. thanks. I have learned to deal with boredom. hehe
Why were you afraid to be associated with Robert?:)
I just read both hubs. Excellent Val. In one of my hubs you may remember I talked about my high school gang of misfits called the keystone gang. One of the guys in our group was a guy we called Clockwork. In high school I was six ft. tall and Clockwork was already six ft. two. He was going with a girl named Janet who ran with us. She was really a cool person. Like your friend, one of the other girls, Cathy Grieve saw the bruises on Janet's body one night at a sleep over. Janet confieded to Cathy that Clockwork did infact beat the hell out of her, and she was afraid to break up with him. I was, I guess the enforcer in our group, due to the fact that I was a little psyco back then. Cathy told me about Clockwork. I was so disappointed in Clockwork. Women beating is something that drives me to rage, due to childhood experiences. I waited for about two weeks when Frankie's parents were out of town and we had a double kegger at his house. I kind of kept to my self at the party .. kind of in the back ground and sipped my beer, as I watched Clockwork. I planned on fixing the problem with him but didn't really have a plan. What happened next was purely spontaneous. He was in the dinning room in front of the sliding patio doors. I walked up and pushed him threw the glass. He crashed through the glass and off the small deck onto the ground. He no more hit the ground and I was on top of him beating with the empty keg. It took three guys to pull me off and keep me from killing him. He was badly bruised up of course but his most serious injurys were the cuts he got from going through the glass, and had to be treated at the hospitol, as one cut was very severe. He never so much as looked at Janet and kept the instructions I'd given him while beating him with the keg. I'm mellow now that I'm older, but a women beater is among the dredge of the planet in my book Val.
Thanks Charlie, mentalist, and Jim for responding to my site. I had a dentist appointment this morning and am being treated for gum disease. My meth mouth is almost completely healed, and should be ready for the finishing touches by March. I had untreated gum disease for years, and while you couldn't see the problem by looking at me, it was disturbing, because the inflamation is so unhealthy and can cause cancer. I go for deep cleanings every three months, and wasn't near a computer, so I'm just now responding to all three of you at once.
Mentalist, Robert's mother thought I was a "poor" lowlife, because my parents were poor. He couldn't seem to stop seeing me, but there was shame for me in the fact that the relationship was very sexual and a secret. Janice would have told me Robert was "just using me for sex," which would have been shaming and humiliating. She would have insisted that we would be dating openly if he "cared anything about me." I questioned all this myself, but couldn't seem to give him up, or take a stand about it. There was shame in this, and Janice always seemed to be able to "date" anyone she wanted, so I feared Robert would want her instead of me, and that knowing he was sleeping with me would cause her to want his attention. I had little confidence and was hopelessly obsessed with the guy. I never shared my relationship with him with any girl of whom I was jealous.
Charlie, writing is one way I deal with bordom, and of course reading hubs written by the three of you. (:v
One more thing, mentalist, you live in a very different part of the country from Georgia. My older sister still tells me today that our parents both came from religious fanatic families, and even when they were trying to avoid being like their parents, they couldn't help passing some of it down. Trying to protect me, my Dad told me from the time I was in diapers that all men wanted to marry a virgin and only used those who weren't. Dad was trying to protect me, not give me sex hangups, but I was a product of the times, and was not a virgin, meaning that Dad's lesson was a lethal one for me. I always believed guys thought I was less than, and a whore after sex. Many Georgia girls and women had similar thoughts and feelings, and my grandparents were extremely fanatical. I felt more shame than the average woman, even in Georgia, and still deal with Dad's well meaning "lessons." Apparantly, your parents were not that religious, and much more liberal than mine. Your Dad probably didn't tell his daughter's men would dump them after sex. Since I believed it, I lost confidence and made it happen. That was why the deal with Hunter was the way it was. As I said, Dad did not mean to hurt his daughter. He really thought this was true, and in some cases it is true, but not in all cases or with all guys. It was true of very relgious guys, or guys brought up that way, and for them my father would be correct, but I don't want a man who thinks that way, because I don't want to live with those kinds of limits on my freedom. I don't want to stay in a bad relationship because I'm afraid of adding notches to my gun. its that simple. That is why I talk more sexual than I actually behave, to free myself of any man who wants a virgin wantabe. I don't want those guys around me. (:v
This attitude toward wanting a virginal reputation is famous in litrature,in the media and movies.In this seemingly universal attitude,I was surrounded by liberated male and female friends.The women would not dare put up with dorogatory attitudes of their sexuality and the men didn't even have the concept of putting a woman down because of it.
In high school I did not understand the people(and there were many)who had your reality of sexual alienation.
I ,then as now,respect a womans sexualality,including the virginal aspect which prevailed in high school...
Don't get me wrong, Mentalist, I have nothing against virgins, but life would be dull and limited if we never moved past it. What I have a problem with are women who pretend to be shocked, and try to act like they never have a sexual thought. If that works for them, fine, but that would bore me stiff, and I resent being pressured by them to act, think, and talk the same. I'm not going to do so, so anyone requiring it, can take it someplace else. Virginity is for kids or nuns. The rest of us don't need it, or have any call to pretend we do. Anyway, nuns are nice people, and so are young girls, but anyone who is full grown and never moves past virgin worship is not someone I want around me, whether they be male or female. I base my self esteem on things I do, rather than on things I don't. I'm not talkng about having sex here, but I'm not talking about NOT having sex either. Enough. Hope you understand where I'm coming from, cause as a younger woman I would stay in a relationship against all logic, rather than take the risk of being thought of as not pure enough. I don't care anymore, and any man who wants an oh so pure, sexually inhibited woman deserves one. That's all I have to say about it. (:v
AMEN:)!!
Thanks mentalist acer. You the man. (:v
What about the PEACE sign, I love that sign and yet my parents did not...I wonder what your Dad said about it? Great read dear Val, thanks for the exciting escape, beautifully written. OH BTW about the dude... don't sell yourself short
Hey katiem. I'm not sure which dude you're talking about. One in the story, or what? Anyhow, thanks for visiting my site, and don't worry. I never sell myself short. Appreciate the support. (:v
I appreciate your keeping all these characters in order! Great job!
Well, no one could keep em under control, but at least I keep em in order. Thanks for commenting on my site. (:v
Hi Valerie,
Wow! Chapter 33! Really?! I'm amazed that you have kept going so long. 364 hubs is just mind blowing to me!
I'm trying to get my own serial hub going. I've only got the first two chapters Inside My Head. Do you have any suggestions for me?
Also, Can I get a link to the first chapter of this, so I can read from the beginning? I'm super interested! The dialogue is so believable and I want to know what I've missed! Thanks!
~AC
Hello ACSutliff, If you will notice the first link, at the end of the chapter, it says to click the link to read previous chapters. If you do so, the chapters are listed on the Undercover hub site, and once you start reading, you can also click the link under the heading that says "continue reading" on each chapter hub.
As far as suggestions, just keep writing. Undercover is actually completed, but it takes a while to add it one chapter at a time to this site. I've started four other novels, but they are on hold until I get this one on here in its entirity. Just keep writing and the story will take on a life of its own. Good luck. (:v
Thanks Valerie!
I will check this out as soon as I get off work today.
And I know what you mean about the story taking on a life of its own.... My first novel needs to be rewritten because it went in the wrong direction and I didn't notice until about 50 pages later. Thanks again!
AC, they get rewritten a lot. Undercover started out titled "Little Job." It has been rewritten at least five times, and now I still make minor changes as I add it to hubpages. That's the nature of novel writing. (:v
Too true! I sat in on a conference with a published children's book author who said, "Published authors are NOT writers. Published authors are REwriters." A valuable grain of truth for any aspiring author. But hey, I'm only a writer!
~AC
PS: I'm going to download all your Teen Years C&P hubs to my kindle and read them on my front porch and on my breaks at work! Can't wait!
Thanks acsutliff, but be aware that the title of the book is Undercover, not Teen years: Crime and Punishment, so if you want to read all the chapters, bookmark the Undercover site, and go from there. Yep, its definitely about revision, revision, revision. Thanks again for taking an interest in my writing. (:v
Valerie sorry I haven't left a comment the last few chapters, it isn't because I haven't intended to. I have been caught up it the story and phase - your writing is getting better and better - the intensity is a amazing.
Thanks billyaustindillon. I can hardly complain about that! Thank you so much for taking an interest in my story. I am by nature intense, so expect more of the same. (:v
ralwus 23 months ago
Sounds like I knew the same people in my youth. those were crazy times, huh?