Now or Never

Proving Beth right that he should never have flown that plane, Frederick fell asleep so quickly in the backseat you might be tempted to say he passed out.

She drove, Frederick slept in the backseat and their little brother Teddy rode shotgun. But Beth didn’t make it far — barely to Roanoke, which wasn’t more than an hour from Lexington— before she pleaded being too tired to drive further in the dark. Frederick was still passed out, so she handed Theodore the keys.

And that’s how 16 year-old Theodore Sullivan, the youngest of four sired by the Clayton County’s Principal and Teacher of the Year, came to be driving through the long night on the four-lane US 29 from Greensboro to College Park, a quaint little suburb of Atlanta where its streets were named after colleges like Harvard and Yale Street. The Sullivans lived on Cambridge Avenue.

Just yesterday the Sullivan family — father, mother Gina, Beth and Teddy – had watched with the chests swelling and eyes tearing their Frederick receive his bachelor of science pre-med from the Virginia Military Institute.

VMI was a private four-year military academy built on Confederate pride and sustained by sadistic discipline. Frederick’s mother confessed that she lived in fear for four years of getting a late-night phone call that would inform her that her son had been dismissed from VMI and that she could pick him up at such and such a train station at such and such of time.

Most rats (freshmen) were dismissed because they couldn’t withstand the extreme harassment inflicted on freshman in order to weed out the weakest among them. But upperclassmen Keydets were kicked out mostly for violating the honor code, which included informing on your classmates. Failure to report a violation was treated as the same. Frederick had not only managed to get through four years but in his junior year he was the upperclassman charged with harassing the rats.

The night of graduation, Frederick and his classmates celebrated the old fashion way men celebrate that all important step into manhood by getting outrageously intoxicated. Not just drunk but knee-walking, blackout drunk. Passed out drunk.

Frederick‘s parents and Gina left that morning in the family car loaded down with much of Frederick’s clothes and paraphernalia while Beth and Theodore planned to drive back in her four-year-old Dodge Dart with Frederick and the rest of his stuff — whenever Frederick woke up from partying. 

The new graduate finally woke up mid afternoon and they still faced an 11 to 12 hour drive. Although he looked sick, he insisted on stopping by the Rockbridge County’s dirt airstrip because he absolutely had to get in another hour flying time on his pilot’s log to maintain his license. He was, he reminded them, a freshly commissioned 1st Lieutenant in the Air Force, which he would owe six years to after medical school.

The Piper Cub was no bigger than Gina’s VW bug. It was hard to believe such a thing could fly, even with wings, the likes of those also failed to inspire confidence. Noticing the look on Teddy’s face as if he knew just what was about to happen, which is exactly what happened when Frederick jokingly asked if his little brother wanted to go for a ride. Beth immediately said absolutely not, no way. Mother would kill them both. Which immediately turned it into a competition for Frederick who didn’t want to give in to any authority much less his sister and so he then insisted that Teddy come with him. When Teddy said he didn’t think so, Frederick pulled the old standby, “What’s the matter, baby, are you too scared?”

Theodore had never been more scared. The two seats for the pilot and passenger were far closer than those in his sister’s Beetle, and it had no backseat and in place of the front trunk of the VW, there was a single propeller, all of which may have proven a theory of thermodynamics, but it did nothing to make Teddy feel the least bit safe. As Frederick continued to point out the landmarks, such as the Maury River, Theodore never relaxed. 

Frederick said at one point that the scariest part of getting your license was when the instructor turned off the engine and you had to maneuver your plane and restart the engine before you fell out of the sky in a nosedive that you couldn’t pull out of. Teddy pretended not to hear that as he quickly glanced out his widow, but when Frederick asked if he wanted to try it, Teddy said, no please, don’t. Please don’t.

After Frederick turned off the airplane’s engine, except for Teddy’s whimpering, there was a quietness that felt like it could last forever.

There weren’t many things Teddy hated more than being made to cry. That Frederick was still able to make him cry had, over the last few years especially, turned the pride he had for his bigger, well-thought of older brother into something else. What, he wasn’t sure. All he’d ever wanted was for his brother to stop calling him a pussy or chicken or brat or any other name. 

But now, driving with his hands achingly tight on the steering wheel, his sister asleep beside him and his brother in the back, Teddy realized what he really wanted was to beat the shit out of Frederick until he begged for mercy and apologized. 

Teddy saw her smoking outside the gas station as he pulled up to a pump. When he had told Beth they needed to stop for gas, she woke long enough to give him a five dollar bill and then had gone back to sleep. Now as he pumped, he glanced from the girl to the pump gauge to make sure he didn’t get more than five dollars worth.

While Teddy and his friends, Mike and Calvin, were always stealing their parents cigarettes and sharing them, he had never seen a girl smoke. Women yes. His mother for one. But nice girls didn’t smoke. 

The cigarette girl came and stood behind the Dart and watched Teddy. After a few back and forth glances, she asked, “Cigarette bother you ?”

“Uh, no. I smoke’em when I got them.“

“Want one?”

“Not this second. I’d rather not meet my maker just yet.”

“Why? You got plans?”

“Maybe,” he said, smiling.

“Maybe not. You sure you’re old enough to drive?”

“Of course.”

“Who’s in there,” she pointed to the car. “Parents?”

“No. No. Brother and sister.”

She followed him into the station when he went to pay for the gas. The attendant gave him a dollar and two dimes back in change.

“Why don’t you buy yourself a pack of cigarettes,” she said standing close behind him. “They nearly give them away in this state.”

“Better not. My sister is some kind of freaky accountant. She literally counts the pennies.” 

The grease smeared attendant looked around and then said, “I can sell you three for a nickel.”

“Get ‘em and we’ll go out back and smoke.”

The attendant asked Teddy to park around to the side so that the pump would be free for the next costumer.

When he did, he was glad moving the car hadn’t woken either of his passengers. Then he and the girl walked around back of the station where they found seats on discarded tires.

“So you weren’t just bullshitting, you really do you smoke,” she said after he had taken a couple of drags and not coughed.

He couldn’t believe he told her the airplane story. How did he get on thtt. But it sure pissed her off. 

“I’m sorry, but your brother sounds like the worst asshole,” she said, which immediately raised the family pride factor before he found himself nodding. 

“You don’t have to put up that shit, you know?”

No, he didn’t know. While he often wished he was bigger and stronger, he also knew that if he ever was to seriously physically challenge Frederick, his older brother would lose his mind, and Teddy never wanted to be on the wrong end of that. 

“You know that, right?” She wasn’t going to let it go. 

“Like, what am I supposed to do? I can’t very well beat the shit out of him without getting killed in the attempt.”

“You could leave.”

Neither said anything. 

When he started to stay I don’t know, she interjected, “Like I did.”

“When?”

“Now,” she said. “I’m a runaway for three more months, then I’m 18 and free.”

“Seriously? Shit.”

“Yeah. Same thing. Wasn’t a brother. More like a raging, alcoholic abusive bitch for a mother. She ran off my old man long before I left.”

“When did you leave. How long ago?”

“I left when I was about your age. If you’re really sixteen.”

“You ran away, what, nearly two years ago."

“Closer to 18 months—“

“And you’ve been got since then?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

And then she held out her arm, and cocked her thumb. 

“Bullshit.”

“I’m going to Beaufort. North Carolina. Four-plus hours driving east,” she said pointing the way. “Might take me twice that long. But it’ll be worth it. To be at the ocean. You ever saw the ocean?”

Teddy had not. 

“Everybody’s always going on about this and that blowing their minds; the Beatles, marijuana, acid, mushrooms, whatever. This movie, that star. It’s all bullshit. You want your mind blown? Come stand with me in the ocean?”

“What?”

“Come stand with me in the ocean.”

Teddy declined the offer of another cigarette from her pack. He looked around toward the Dart where his sister and brother still slept, though he worried either or both would wake up after all this time of not moving.

“I hear it’s nice and I can always get a job waitressing. You could probably learn how to wash dishes, don’t you think.”

She was serious. But he knew he couldn’t’ any more run away than he could fly. It wasn’t in him. Frederick was right. He was a chicken shit. 

“Naw, I gotta getting going, we have a long ride ahead of us. And they’ll be wondering what I’ve been doing. Thanks for the, uh, you know. Thanks. 

“I don’t think you are a chicken shit.”

“What?”

“Isn’t that what he called you. A chicken shit because he scared you, which would have scared anybody. A seriously psycho turning off the engine. For God’s sake. How could you even get in the car with someone like that.”

They then heard before they saw a Bonneville Pontiac with its windows down blaring "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.” It came down the street and pulled into the station.

She asked Teddy if he like the Beatles. He couldn’t think of a single girl he knew who weren’t in love with the Beatles. Therefore, he liked them. But he secretly preferred county artists like Johnny Cash and Glenn Campbell. 

Before he could answer, she allowed as how she hated them.

“You hate the Beatles?”

“I”m more into Velvet Underground.”

Before he realized he was about to reveal himself as some kind of Boy Scout, he asked, “Who?”

She said, “Boy, I need to educate you.”

The guy with the Pontiac walked around back with the girls to use the bathrooms. He had long hair and two young girls wore granny dresses.. 

When the guy came out, she asked him where he was headed. 

“Wilmington,” he said. 

“Close enough,” she said to Teddy, who said, “What?”

“Mind if we catch a ride. We travel small?”

“Not me,” Teddy said, just as the guy said, “Sure” and then he looked at the cigarette girl and said, “Either way. We’re leaving now.”

He walked around the front as the two girls came out and headed toward their ride.

“It’s now or never,” she said to Teddy as she started walking around the side. “From Wilmington, it’s a hop skip and a jump to Beaufort.”

Teddy walked around the side of the station where his sister and brother slept in the parked Dart. He could see the girl climb in the back seat of the Pontiac. He watched as the car backed away from the pumps and then started toward the highway.

And then he was running, waving his arms, yelling, “Wait. Wait for me! Wait. I’m coming.”