The Eavesdroppers

I’ve never told this story to anybody before now. Once I get going, you’ll understand why. It’s the proudest I’ve ever been of Mama and she isn’t even aware that I know what happened.

I hope everybody reading this remembers party lines. This was way back in 1979. I was 15 years old and my family lived in Spivey Subdivision, over on Flat Fork in Caudill County. They still had a party line there. They were a thing of the past in most places, but you’ve always been able to set your watch back 10 years when you come to Eastern Kentucky. That party line was the bane of my father’s existence. Dad was the pastor of a small church, but to make a living, he sold real estate. He’d get on the line to make a phone call for his ministry or business and almost without fail, Lara Jordan would be on there chatting with one of her friends. Dad, being a man of God, would ask her, in a kind and polite way to please clear the line for him.

Lara Jordan was the object of my desire back then. The best way I know to describe her is that she looked like a younger and skinnier version of Farrah Fawcett. Lara lived three doors down from our house. She was two years older than me, a senior. She barely knew that I was alive and wouldn’t have if I hadn’t spent a lot of time hanging out with her brother, Dale. Mom and Dad weren’t exactly thrilled that I was hanging out with Dale Jordan. In fact, Mom almost always called him “that no good Dale”. I had to admit that my pal was kind of crazy. Dale was almost always getting into something he shouldn’t have been.

We were on the bus coming home from school, I think that it was on Thursday. Dale was excited about something.

“Hey, Charley, ya really need to come down to the house and see what I rigged up!” he said.

Lara was sitting in the seat in front of us. She turned around and spoke to me…

“Listen, Charley,” she said and she sounded like she was irritated. “ You need to talk some sense into my idiot brother! He’s gonna get himself in trouble!”

I was so excited that Lara was actually speaking to me and all I could think to do was smile and nod stupidly.

“Aww, sis, I ain’t hurtin’ anything!” Dale responded. ”Come down later on and see for yourself, Charley!”

“Alright,“ I said. “As soon as I finish up my homework, I’ll come down, ok?”

Dale grinned and nodded. He never brought any books home from school. I was and honor roll student, but Dale barely scraped by with a D average. There were about three weeks left in the school year and Dale had confided in me that it was up in the air whether or not he would be going to summer school or not.

I got off the bus at my house, went to my room, kicked off my shoes, and went right to work on my homework- trigonometry, American history, and physics. It took me until suppertime to finish. Dinner that night was meatloaf, green beans, mac and cheese, Brussels sprouts, and apple pie for desert. Mom was and still is, a great cook. When supper was finished, I told the folks that Dalle wanted to see me about something.

“Son, I hope you’re being an influence on that boy and not the other way around,” Dad said.

“I do the best that I can,” I responded and I was being truthful.

I left the house and walked down the gravel road to the Jordan house. I rang the doorbell and Lara answered the door. She was wearing a bikini top, cutoffs, and went barefoot. I had to catch my breath.

“He’s in his bedroom, Charley,” she said. “Try to be a good influence on him, will ya?”

This bit about me being a good influence was getting really old really fast!

I went to my friend’s room and walked in without knocking. He was seated on the floor and looked up at me with a big grin. The look of somebody who thought that he was getting away with something. On the floor was a telephone. There was also a reel to reel tape recorder. There were wires running from the tape recorder to the phone. I had a bad feeling about this!

“hey, check this out!” said Dale. “I can record people talking on the party line!”

“ is that even legal?” I asked.

“Stop being such a preacher’s kid!” Dale said, almost spitting the words out. Then, as he pushed the PLAY button, “Listen to what I got last night!”

“Yeah, it’s me,” one of our neighbors, Devoy Loudermilk was saying. “How ya doin’, baby?”

The next voice I recognized as Georgia Whitaker, the secretary at the high school. She said, “I had a lousy day at work today, lover. Mr. Traxel was being a jerk all day! Any way you can come over tonight? I could sure use the company!”

“Not tonight, babe, the wife is expecting me home at the right time.”

“Can’t ya tell her that you had to work late again?”

“No, since Willie Tate started working here, she can call Willie’s wife Regina and check up on my story. It’s gonna make it rough on us, hon!”

“Check it out,” Dale said. He was grinning ear to ear. “Loudermilk is cheatin’ on his wife with Mr. Traxel’s secretary at school! Your old man would be interested in that!”

Devoy Loudermilk and his wife were members of Dad’s church!

“Look, I don’t wanna hear any more of that!” I said, trying to sound forceful.

“Awright!” Dale replied. He pushed the fast forward button for a second. Then pushed the stop button. “Here’s the next one!”

He pushed PLAY. The next voice I heard was my mother’s!

“Hello,” she said. “You’ve got the Minix residence.

“Hi, Sister Minix,” a familiar voice answered. “I’m so glad it was you that answered. I really need to talk!”

That was the voice of Ramona Ferguson. Mrs. Ferguson was also a member of Dad’s church. She was a tall woman with salt and pepper hair that she wore in an up do. She was the best dressed women at every church service. She and her family was better off than most members of the church. Her husband, Dude, owned the Ford dealership in Hickmanville. Her daughter, Meg was a senior like Lara, was in the National Honor Society and never seemed to wear the same outfit twice.

To be honest, they seemed like they thought that they were better because they were better off!

“I’m always here to listen, sister“ Mom was saying. “What’s wrong?”

“Honestly, I feel like running a tub of water, climbing in, and cutting my wrists with a knife!” Mrs. Ferguson was wailing now.

“Now, don’t even think that!” Mom said. “What could possibly be that bad?”

“Well, it’s Meg. My only child. The girl I raised in church. She’s always been such a good girl! My Lord, I gave her everything! Everything, I tell you!”

“Is something wrong with Meg?” Mom asked.

“Well, how can I say this? Well, she.. Meg is… Meg is pregnant! I am so ashamed!”

“Look, Ramona, don’t be so hard on yourself! It happens in the best families, to the best of parents! Just have faith and you can get through this!”

I heard sobbing...and giggling?

I looked at Dale and he was giggling about what he was hearing! What was wrong with him?

Through sobs, Ramona Ferguson spoke again.

“You don’t know the whole story, sister! The baby...the baby is…”

There was more sobbing, then Ramona wailed, “I can’t say it!”

Mom sighed. Then, she said “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Ramona!”

There was more sobbing. I knew that I should have had Dale shut the tape machine off, but something inside wouldn’t let me.

When Ramona spoke again, hr voice was wailing as though she was in agony!

“The baby is colored! It’s black! You know Bandy Robinson, the mechanic at my husband’s dealership?”

“Sure, I know Boley,” Mom replied. “He was a senior when David and I were freshmen. Big basketball and football star back then.”

“His son, Tony, Meg says Tony has to be the daddy. Can’t be anybody else, she says! Sister, what in God’s name am I supposed to do with a black grandchild?”

Mom sighed again. Then, she spoke. My Dad is the preacher, but he never preached better than my mother did that day.

“Well,” Mom said, “that’s your grandbaby. The first thing you need to do is love him!”

I felt tears forming in my eyes. Then I heard Dale giggling. That’s when I blew my stack!

“Shut that thing off right now!” I yelled at him. “You need to shut this operation down right now!”

“Why is that? Because I can see what a bunch of hypocrites your church people are?” he sneered at me.

He wasn’t done.

“I think it’s great that those Fergusons turn out to be nothing but white trash! They always go around actin’ like their septic tank don’t stink!”

“ You got no right to call anybody white trash if you’re doing crap like this!” I yelled.

Dales’s fist were clinched and he stood up.

“You better explain yourself, buddy!” he said, hissing the words like a snake.

I stood up, too. I didn’t want to fight one of the few friends I had, so I decided to reason with him.

“Look, what would you do if you caught somebody peeking through your sister’s bedroom window?” I asked him.

“I’d get my Louisville Slugger and beat that pervert to death!”

“And that’s what you should do! That guy would be violating her privacy. What we just did was no better!”

He looked at the floor and took a deep breath.

“Yeah, I think you’re right!” he said. “I’ll unhook that stuff and I’ll destroy that tape. Can I ask you something, Charley?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Did you feel like you were dirty while you listened to that?”

I nodded.

He nodded.

“Me, too, Charley!”

The next time that I went over there, the tape player was nowhere to be found. A few months after school went out, Dale accused me of only being his friend because I wanted to be around Lara. We ended up having a fist fight and beat each other up pretty good. We never spoke again. Dale wound up joining the Army and dying in Fallujah. Lara ended up married to a preacher and living in Minnesota. Haven’t seen or heard from her in a long time.

You may wonder why I’m telling about this now. Well, I’ve held it inside for a long time and needed to get it off my chest. Mom will never see it. She doesn’t own a computer and wouldn’t know how to use it if she did. If my younger brother Hank shows this to her, I’ll say this: I love you, Mom, and what you did that day made me very proud. A lot prouder than I’ve ever been of anything that I ever did.