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Stonewall: Stories of Gay Liberation 77

bulky to smuggle under his clothes, and he was too shell-shocked
from his arrest in the Green County Library to tear out the long
article that continued to the last page of the first section. Instead, he
tried to memorize the interesting, livid details of thirteen apparently
connected murders and six other persons missing.
“Even if I couldn’t see,” Floyd said, “it wouldn’t make me any
better a pianist.” He lifted the wired board off his lap. “This here’s
like I always rebuild.” He carried it across the shop and drew back
the curtain on an adjacent room. “You remember player pianos? I
get them from all across the country. Bought one in Nebraska for
twenty-five bucks. Sold it in Sausalito to Sally Stanford for you
wouldn’t guess how much.” He pulled the curtain closed. “Nossir.
Seeing or not seeing would be all the same to me pumping at one
of my players with both feet.”
Robert looked out the window. Down in the street the ticket left
by the triumphant meter maid flapped in the ocean breeze sweeping
down 18th Street to Castro where men, he never would have thought
it, walked arm in arm. They were strangers, maybe dangerous strang-
ers, but he recognized them all the same. “I should’ve locked my
car.” He thought of the .22 caliber handgun stashed under the seat
and he laughed because it’s impossible for someone on probation to
get a permit for a handgun, but it’s no way impossible for that same
person to get a handgun, especially when that person’s daddy dies
and leaves it loaded in a bedroom drawer. “Damn,” he said.
Floyd moved to the window, wiping his hands. “That your
Chevy?”
He admired the Chevrolet gleaming all red and white with hardly
a speck of any road grime Robert had wiped off every time he stopped
to gas up. He had bought it, restored and cherry, the day he turned
sixteen, paying for it with insurance money his mom had given him
as his share of his dad’s policy. Those had been the days! The draft
had been lenient to neglectful. By 1973, the draft was carnivorous
for red-blooded all-American boys. He told Louise Yavonovich, the
gray-haired lady who ran the Green County Selective Service Board,
that she couldn’t draft him because he was leaving for California.
©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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