MICHAEL MALONE
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back to Duke that fall term so she could have gotten her degree. But she
knows there's nothing she really needs it for, except
to
hang in the den.
I mean she'll never have to go out and work or anything. We do fine.
We had Buster in November, two weeks after I got the news that
Billy Weatherspoon'd been killed doing technical advising over there
someplace in Vietnam. His mom couldn't say the name of the place.
That's why our Buster 's name is William Weatherspoon Tryson,
instead of Aaron Lionel Tryson III, like Linda wanted at first. Wilson
and Dickey and I really tied one on for Billy the night we heard. We got
his old Corvair that was still sitting in his parents' garage waiting for
him. We drove it out
to
the Haw River and set it on fire and pushed it
in. I don 't know what got into us, it just happened.
Our Belinda was born about a year after we built our house in
Hope Valley. She was a doll from the day she was born. Maybe it
sounds a lillIe gushy, but I love that little girl to death. She's just fine,
smart and pretty, class secretary, just sweet as heaven. I don 't have to
worry about her the way I do about Buster.
I'm in a constant worry about him. Buster's a loner, lives in his
room. Who knows what in the world he's doing in there. I know he'd
get more exercise if they threw him in jail the way they did most of his
heroes, because in jail at least they'd make him do a few sit-ups. I
bought him a car, but if I didn't drive it myself on weekends, the damn
battery would rust. Buster rides a bicycle and says the combustion
engine is as dead as dinosaurs. Worrying about the damn energy crisis
never crossed my mind when I was seventeen, and I don 't see why my
boy ought
to
throw his youth away on the sad state of the world. Hon–
est to God, he's my own son, and I love him to death , but the fact is,
Buster looks like, and talks like, what we used to call a
nerd.
I don't
know what they call it now, but my heart just aches because I'm sure
whatever it is, it's what they 're calling Buster. I ask Belinda, "Hon–
eypie, why doesn't your big brother ever ask a girl out, couldn't you
fix him up with one of your friends?" But she says, "Oh Daddy, forget
it. He's not interested."
I swear rm not being hard on him just because he doesn't fit in
like I did. It 's because I don 't believe he's happy. Hell, how could he be,
locked up in his room with all the sorrows of the world on his chest,
and no friends, not
to
mention no girl?! Maybe this is going to sound
horrible for a father to say, but I almost hope he's at least locked up in
there with a magazine, giving himself a little solo action every now and
then. I mean I hope Belinda's not telling me Buster's not interested in
sex!
Because, if you ask me, sex is what we have
to
make up for having
to die. That's my own opinion. I guess you could call sex God's booby
