LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 11

Thursday, April 28^th, 1988

A FRIEND LOVES AT ALL TIMES, AND A BROTHER IS BORN FOR ADVERSITY (Proverbs 17:17)

            “Loyd.” Pat, pat, slap. “Loyd, are you all right?”

            My eyes opened and looked into Cat’s concerned green eyes. Not a Cat, but my Cat, Catalina Clutterbuck. But then it dawned on me. It wasn’t Cat gazing down at me, but it was her brother. What did he call himself? Oh, it was Pastor Kenny Clutterbuck.

            The Pastor part puzzled me. He looked too young to be a pastor. But what did I know? I didn’t even understand why I was laying on the floor and he was slapping my face. “What happened?”

            “You seemed to have fainted,” Pastor Clutterbuck told me.

            “That can’t be. I’ve never fainted.”

            “As the saying goes, there’s a first time for everything.”

            I couldn’t have fainted. He must have hit me. Yes, he hit me! Right after he told me Cat was pregnant! Cat pregnant? Me the father? He was defending her honor; I couldn’t blame him. But how could I be so unaware? For I was a not only a black belt, but a second degree black belt. “Are you a martial artist?”

            “A what?”

            “Did you hit me?”

            “What? Oh, no, no, no, I wouldn’t hit anybody. Like I said, you fainted. It can be quite startling to be informed that you’re going to be a father.”

            “Don’t I know it,” I mumbled as his words also reminded me of Becky.

            “Excuse me?”

            “Oh, never mind,” I said as he helped me to my feet. “Where are my manners? Come in, Pastor. Have a seat. Would you like something to drink?”

            “Just a glass of water, please.”

            “Yeah, me too. I’m thirsty.”

            “You know, dehydration is another cause of fainting.”

            “I didn’t…” I began to say, but apparently I did.

            The springs groaned when he sat on the sofa which was at least about old as I was. I think it used to be beige. I handed him a glass of water, and he thanked me. I sat across from him in a beat up old recliner. I think it used to be light blue.

            “I must admit, this feels kind of awkward and confusing, Pastor.”

            “Please, first of all, call me Kenny. After all, I am gonna be an uncle to your son or daughter.”

            My head swam again, but not enough to make me, well, faint. I didn’t understand, I don’t faint. ‘Apparently you do,’ my mind’s ear could hear Cat say.

            “So Cat’s alright?” I asked. “But… you say… pregnant?”

            “Correct on both accounts. And, like I said, she’s currently staying with our grandmother.”

            “So where’s your grandmother?”

            “Where we mostly grew up, Two Harbors, Minnesota.”

            “Forgive me for asking, but how can you be sure that I’m the father?”

            “She was deeply in love with you, Loyd. But I assume you got to know Cat quite well. She’s not one to talk about feelings, or one to reveal personal information. I didn’t find out your name, or exactly where you and she had been living, until after she left for our grandmother’s. Do you know how I found out who you are, and where to find you?”

            “Please enlighten me.”

            “Grandma called me the other day to tell me about witnessing a rare instance of gleeful emotion from Cat. It happened when Cat discovered that you had been drafted by the Chicago Bears. Grandma informed me that your name was Loyd Burl from Whitney college. I caught the next flight to this area to pay you a visit on Cat’s behalf.”

            I spoke with all gentleness. “Why didn’t Cat come tell me on her own behalf?”

            “Cat’s stubborn. She has some notion that she led you into sin, and she doesn’t want to burden you with a child. She thinks you’d have a much brighter future without her.”

            “Preposterous,” was all I could mutter. Kenny gave me a minute to process everything.  “So… apparently you believe otherwise?”

            “Loyd, beyond believing you had a right to know about your unborn child, I just had to meet the man who moved Cat in such a profound way. Forgive me for being quite graphic, but I had to meet the man that didn’t take my sister’s virginity but led her to persuade him to accept her offer of it. But let me be clear. I do not condone premarital sex.”

            The more we talked, the more baffled I seemed to become. It was also weird having a discussion with a pastor about sexual relations, and the sexual history of his sister. “Kenny, Cat didn’t lose her virginity with me.”

            I told him about her being date raped at her high school prom, and also her boyfriend who was from California. I watched his lip tremble, and then tears leak from his eyes. I regretted having to inform this man I was really beginning to like what happened to his sister. But what he revealed to me stunned me more than I had stunned him.

            “Loyd, what you just told me about the date rape didn’t happen to Cat,” he said with a severely choked up voice. “It happened to our sister Abby… A month later… She committed suicide. Sweet, quiet little Cat was barely a teenager, only thirteen years old. It goes without saying that she took it hard. Very hard.”

            Pastor Kenny put his hands on his face and wept. I felt tears sting my own eyes, and then trickle down my cheeks. I don’t know why I did it, but I sat next to Kenny on the old sofa and put my arm around him. He slowly pulled his hands away from his and looked at me as if I had two heads. I suddenly felt embarrassed at this display of emotion with someone I had known for only about twenty minutes. I quickly wiped at the tears on my own face and stood.

            “I now see what Cat saw in you,” he told me with a smile of solidarity.

            I shrugged and felt confused. “Sorry, I, ah…”

            “No, no, don’t be sorry. Cat said you were different. But she meant that in a positive way. Just so you know, for the first time in years, I saw something like joy on Cat’s face when she talked about you while she stayed with me.”

            We looked at each other for a moment, then he looked at his shoes. I looked at my shoes. After a minute I gently said, “That’s awful about your sister Abby. But what about the boyfriend from California?”

            “Long story short, Cat didn’t meet him at Whitney college. He was a childhood friend. His parents divorced when he was young. His mother was from California and met his father when he was in the military and stationed out there. But his dad was from northern Minnesota.”

            “Okay fine,” I interrupted, feeling impatient. “But how do you know he and Cat weren’t, you know, an item?”

            “For one thing Cat wouldn’t lie to me. And for another, and I’ll divulge this since you don’t know him, he’s gay, and for a while, Cat was his mask. They pretended to be a couple but actually weren’t.”

            “No offense, but why would Cat lie to me, but not to you?”

            “Cat has tried to be asexual, and she has been very successful at it. That is, until you came into her life. There are two instances of deceit that she confided in me after she came to stay with me in California. She felt guilty for letting people think a gay fellow was her boyfriend. And she felt guilty about lying to you by claiming what happened to our sister happened to her.”

            “Why would she tell me that? I don’t get her deceit at all. Most women try to downplay their sexual past, not embellish it.”

            “It was Cat’s way of trying to push you away. She was trying to discourage you from, shall we say, wanting her, desiring her. Forgive me if this sounds crass, but Cat tends to be a man hater. At least with the type of guys that leer at women.”

            “I don’t get that either. I mean, did you know she was a waitress at Hooter’s?”

            “Yes.”

            “So what gives? Forgive me for stereo typing, but Hooter’s waitresses strike me as anything but women who wouldn’t want men to, put it mildly, desire them.”

            “Au Contraire, my dear man. There’s three reasons she worked there. One, she felt safe from being attracted to the type of guys that patronized an establishment known for its sexy women. Two, the friend that convinced her to work there said the tips were great. And three, my feisty sister is ornery, and I know she enjoyed being a tease. However, the first two she acknowledged, and the last I deduced.”

            We looked at each other for a long moment again. Then I asked, “I still don’t understand the nature of your visit. I mean, is there something beyond thinking I had a right to know and shaking the hand of the guy that impregnated your sister?”

            For the first time, this ultra calm man seemed agitated. It occurred to me that the last thing I said was tacky. However, it was only a quick clenching of his jaw that indicated displeasure, as well as an ever so slight edge to his voice. “Let me be clear. It was not a congratulatory wanting to meet you. It was a ‘what type of guy could break down the seemingly impregnable walls of my sister.’ But there is one more thing. Actually two.”

            He eyed me cautiously, as if he was reconsidering divulging the one more thing. So I asked, “What is it?

            “I was hoping to convince you to go see her. I thought that request was something better done in person.”

            “Well, you don’t have to do much convincing. I’d love to see her! Especially with her carrying my child!”

            I felt my toes curl. My words reminded me again of a second woman carrying my child! Oh the ironies of life. I hope this doesn’t sound immodest, but I never, ever thought that with my value system, I would end up being the father of two children only about a month apart in age.

            “Wonderful!” he said with a smile and a hand clap.

            “So you think she’d take me back?” I asked excitedly, as I sat up straight.

            “No,” he replied immediately with a head shake.

            I instantly deflated. Then I said a little more disgusted than I intended. “Well, why do you want me to go see her then?”

            “I’m just being honest about the odds. Do I think she’ll want to be involved with you? No. Do I think it’s possible? Yes.”

            “If it’s no, will she want me to be involved with our child’s life?”

            He sucked in air through his nose and looked at the ceiling. “Have you ever been to the North Shore, Loyd?”

            “What North Shore?”

            “You know, northern Minnesota, along Lake Superior?”

            “I haven’t.”

            “My point is, Cat is loving it in Two Harbors right now. She ended up here in your town because she studied art briefly at the same school you went to, Whitney college.”

            I knew Cat was an amateur artist, as was I. Yet for some reason, we never really shared much of our work with each other. Now, ironically with her out of the picture at the moment, I was about to get a healthy sample.

            “We’ve come to another of the reasons why I paid you a visit,” the good pastor told me. “I’ll need to go to my rental car for a minute.”

            I paced several laps around my apartment while I waited for him to return. When he did, he carried three large sketch pads. We sat, and I looked at them in awe. Cat was far more talented than I.

            “I happened to see her put these in the garbage before she left,” Pastor Clutterbuck said.

            There were many pencil sketches, but only three that were colored with oil pastels. One of me kicking a football with a cheering crowd in the background. One of me tending a wounded bird on the left side, and me releasing the healed bird on the right side. Did the bird represent her? If so what exactly did it mean?

            But it was the third colored picture that got to me the most. It was she and I as an old couple, on a two seat swing that was attached to a big tree. My arm was around her shoulders, her head on one of mine. I chuckled that she had made me bald. But then I dropped the pad and wept when I read the caption at the bottom.

            It read: A lifetime of happiness after a century of love, the summer of 2038.

            I felt a strange loneliness as I sobbed. One mother carrying my child refused to marry me. The other fled over a thousand miles away. I felt a gentle arm go over my shoulders. Pastor Clutterbuck was weeping along with me.

            “I think we’d really hit it off as brothers-in-law,” he told me.

            “So… You think Cat might marry me if I ask?” I tried again.

            “No,” he said without hesitation. “But you should at least give it a try.”

            A realization came to me. The date on Cat’s painting was fifty years from this coming summer. Yet Kenny’s ‘no’ about her saying ‘yes’ to marriage was still echoing in my head. Either way, I had to find Cat. I simply had to see her.

            “I’m going to perceive by the look on your face that you’re going to Two Harbors,” Pastor Clutterbuck said.

            “I am. I have class tomorrow as well as my job, but I will leave as soon as I punch out. Do you want to go together?”

            “I’m sorry, but you’re on your own. I fly out tomorrow morning.”

            “This truly was a business trip.”

            He shrugged. “I suppose it was.”

            “Do you have to a place to stay.”

            “I was gonna get a motel.”

            “You’re welcome to stay here.”

            “Thanks!” he said with a grin.

            I grinned back and shook his hand. “Thank you for your trouble.”

            “No trouble, my pleasure. But one more thing. You’ve heard beware of dog?” he said, and I arched an eyebrow. “Well, beware of Grandma.”