What Things Are Made Of

It Had to Do with Candy Sanders:

60 It Had to Do with Candy Sanders: How I went coat-less to show her I was brave. How, when we danced the schottische in P.E., my breathing shook. How I strained to see her panties when she whirled. It was fun to ride my bike, repeating Can-dy, one syllable per pump. But Little Anthony sobbing, “Tears on My Pillow,” Ben E. King’s cavernous, “I—I who have no one . . .” warned of worse pain to come than broken arms and stitches— adult pain like heart attack, or what pinned Mr. Jones in bed all day: a grown man, crying. I had Teddy Laughlin to catch bluegills with, Joey Franz for Home Run Derby, Zack and Jack Boles to toilet-paper houses. I had my sister Carol to tease, her cats to torment, and my mom and dad. Could it all be raygunblasted into nothing by a girl when I rowed past the known world out onto the pitching whitecaps of my teens? When Candy traded dog tags with Trenton Glass, I hummed, “Tragedy,” but still stayed on my toes at shortstop, snagged the ball’s white blur, and threw a strike to Robbie Tate at first. He’d turn gangster, and OD at seventeen; but at ten he yelled, “Way to rock, Doc,” as I jogged in to bat, loose and easy as the yodel on “Little Star,” the singer begging for “a love to share.” How would it be to want someone so much I cried? 61 To live in Lonesome Town or Heartbreak Hotel? To hurt like Jack Scott, voice smoky and deep as he moaned, “Burning bridges behind me,” and the pines in my backyard shuddered and sighed? ...