Slow Dancing
A Short Story
by
Wayne C. Long
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Wayne C. Long
Cover image Copyright abdulsatarid – Fotolia.com
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Sonny Sax had been born Saul Sachsenfelder in Germany to Jewish parents in 1942. His father David and mother Marta had been musicians. They toted their only child from their one room ghetto apartment to bar mitzvahs and dance halls, where Marta sang to the splendid accompaniment of David’s accordion. Baby Saul would sleep in his father’s red-velvet-lined accordion case while his parents made their living.
Hitler however had other plans for the little family.
Three years later, young Saul, hastily lashed to his bed with a blood-spattered leather strop, screamed up into the cold, cruel face of the Auschwitz SS matron as she bore down on the flesh of his shrunken forearm with the tattoo needle. Then and there the matron changed his birth-name to kinder # 476591.
His parents perished in the ghastly Zyklon B showers. Months after the Allies liberated the camp, male orphan 476591 or Sonny as he was later nicknamed by all the kids in our town, arrived in America, sponsored by the child refugee aid committee of the local branch of the Protestant church located at the end of my block. He had been adopted by a childless wealthy couple, Richard and Mary McClure, who lived in a two-story house down the street from us.
*****
Sonny was like a big brother to me and several other boys around town. We were always overhearing his voice on our Philco console radio with the green tuning-eye.
After high school classes dismissed for the day, Sonny would rush home on his Cushman motor scooter, grab an ice cold Coca-Cola from the fridge, and go up to his second-floor bedroom where he kept his ham radio equipment. That boy loved to talk on the radio!
“WB7XXX, this is Kilo Nine Yankee November Foxtrot. The handle is Sonny” we could hear him say over the Philco at our house.
“You are 59 in Illinois. Over!”
I would listen intently to these conversations Sonny had with his many short-wave radio friends around the country. I learned a lot about his life too.
In his senior year of high school, Sonny had gotten a part-time job at the small 5000-watt AM radio station outside of town up on Signal Hill Road. He answered the phone, filed papers, and did all the gopher jobs that needed doing at WMNT, while the station’s one and only DJ held down the little fort from four every afternoon until midnight.
During the day, they broadcasted farm reports, news, and played taped background music like Mantovanni and the Mitch Miller orchestra. Sonny sometimes sat in as substitute DJ when the regular guy was off sick. He especially loved to play requests to the teens calling in after school.
*****
I turned thirteen on Friday the 13th in November of 1958, the same month that Conway Twitty’s song hit number one on the pop charts. It was an exciting time to become a teenager.
My parents let me have some kids over for a boy-girl birthday party and we had a blast, dancing and gossiping about school things. I got my first transistor radio, complete with an earphone, from my mom and dad.
That night, I got up the courage to ask Cheryl to dance with me. I held her closely while we rotated around the dimly-lit rec room, slow dancing as “It’s All in the Game” by Tommy Edwards played softly on the record player.
None of us could have imagined what was to happen later that night.
*****
Billy and Stan loved cars like all seventeen-year-olds.
Billy was from the older side of town and he lived with his widowed mom in a rented Quonset-style house that had once been part of a chicken farm. He spent every dime he earned, fixing up the engine of an old ‘40 Ford which had been left in the barn on the property by a bankrupt chicken farmer.
When Stan turned sixteen, his dad gave him a brand-new, big-engine ‘57 Chevy, turquoise and white, with a convertible top. Stan had no trouble getting dates with that car. He did have trouble with Billy.
*****
Years earlier, Billy’s mom had worked for Stan’s father at the furniture factory down on Railroad Street. Stan’s father had gotten the job, everyone said, because he had been a big football hero back in his senior year of high school.
*****
It had been particularly hard on the furniture line that week. All the workers were below quota and the big boss had yelled at Stan‘s dad in front of his shift crew, to bring up their numbers or he’d find someone who would. Stan’s dad argued with him, then took a swing at the boss, knocking his horn-rimmed glasses to the shop floor.
“That’s it, O’Donnell. I’m putting you on suspension until Monday!” shouted the boss.
The two of them glared at each other for a few seconds. Then the big boss turned to walk away. Stan’s dad grabbed his lunch bucket and, giving the finger to the back of the suit-coated figure, stormed off for the parking lot. Tomorrow was Friday and he would spend it in a bar.
*****
Second shift let out at eleven o’clock at night and Billy’s mom had to walk the fourteen blocks back home in the dark, rain or shine. The July heat still radiated off the sidewalk as she stepped off the curb.
Almost without warning, a big Oldsmobile stopped in the crosswalk and the passenger side window lowered. O’Donnell asked her if she wanted a ride home.
*****
“Okay, why not? My feet are killing me!” exclaimed Billy’s mom. She closed the passenger side door and the Olds sped out of the intersection.
It had started to rain. From the perforated speaker above the dimly-lit AM radio dial came a Dorsey tune that reminded her of her husband who had been killed overseas.
The sweating driver began to talk to her and offered her a cold Hamm’s from the crumpled sack between them. He pointed to the bottle opener in the open ashtray.
She drained the ice-cold bottle in three refreshing gulps. Several recently-emptied beer bottles clinked together on the floor of the car.
Being her supervisor on the line, Stan’s father had often cast those “looks” at her as he walked the shop floor. She made a tight figure in those jeans. And she had that golden hair, bobbed with a barrette, like one of those Breck girls on the back of Senior Scholastic magazine.
She hadn’t had a physical relationship with a man since her husband had left for the service. Her strict Catholic background had firmly planted the rule in her head that unmarried sex was a mortal sin.
Stan’s dad however cheated on his wife all the time, especially when he went to Chicago for those supervisor-training meetings.
Raindrops on the front window of the powerful sedan competed momentarily with the rhythmic back-and-forth squishing of the wipers.
She told him to slow down but he just stared blankly down the street as it merged with the muddy gravel of Creek Road that led out of town toward the river. Exhausted from the long hot shift, her mind altered by the alcohol, she lost track of where they were headed.
Stan’s father spun the car onto the dirt road that led up to the deserted Grange Hall. Cutting the headlights, he pulled around behind the dilapidated frame building and turned off the ignition.