We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

on your shoulder saying Good play! nice try!
    The most popular guy on the team, practically. One of the best-looking.
    A decent guy, and even, if you knew him better, a Christian—sort of. His mother Corinne Mulvaney was a devout churchgoer, at this time a member of the South Lebanon United Methodist congregation. Mule went less and less frequently with her and the others to church services now he was older, but still it rubs off on you. You have to know deep in your heart Do unto others as you would they would do unto you is just plain common sense. So he was beginning to get a little scared. Not seriously scared, but a little. Mixing warm Molson with vodka and whiskey didn’t help. After the big party at the MacIntyres’ (this really cool ranch-style house on the golf course) they’d piled into cars and driven six miles out to the funky County Line Tavern, where there was the possibility, unwarranted as it turned out, of some after-hours drinking, and some “girls.” Then word got out that T-T MacIntyre had picked up Della Rae Duncan, the poor bitch was dumb enough and drunk enough to imagine he “liked” her and wanted to be her “steady.” They were in Jamie Klinger’s van, this gang of guys. Cruising Route 119 as far south as the river, then turning back to Mt. Ephraim. Cruising Main Street, where (it’s after 2 A.M. ) everything is dead—the Majestic, the Checkerboard Diner. Then into the cemetery off Iroquois. Which was where Frankie Kreigner trailed them. Though not turning into the cemetery but circling the block. Mule Mulvaney was saying, “Maybe we should check them out?—they might be hurting her, or something.” Another time he said, like pleading, “Shit, Della Rae, that poor mutt, that’s like shooting fish in a barrel.” The other guys were divided. Maybe yes, maybe no. There was something exciting about this. Knowing Della Rae was putting out for their buddies, or anyway guessing so. Though they didn’t want to investigate, exactly. Della Rae was a pig and she was smashed out of her skull and you didn’t want to think about it, Mule felt blood rush into his cock like a faucet turned on: hot.
    So what they did was, actually they did nothing.
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    That’s for the cemetery! —the guys would snigger behind their hands.
    Hoo! One for the cem-e-tery! —the girls would overhear, perplexed and vaguely embarrassed.
    Keep it for the cemetery! Right on! —giving one another the peacenik sign, laughing like hell. Sometimes under their teachers’ very noses and if it was a woman teacher, all the more hilarious.
    Girls knew nothing about it. At any rate not the good girls. So if one could be enticed into saying, “‘Cemetery’?—why?” this was quite a coup.
    In the junior high, where Della Rae Duncan was a student, the girls knew even less. The smartest girls, the leaders, the most popular girls—Marianne Mulvaney, Suzi Quigley, Trisha LaPorte, Bonnie Sherman and their clique. These were cheerleaders, class officers (Marianne Mulvaney was secretary), members of the Drama Club, the French Club, the Quill and Scroll Literary Society, the school chorus. They were Honors Students. They were active in the Christian Youth Conference. Because they were good-girl girls they believed they were not snobbish and they competed with one another in being friendly , being nice , to the most obscure students; the most pathetic losers; like Della Rae Duncan, and other “trailer-village” kids. Their smiles were golden coins scattered carelessly in the school corridors, their Hi’s! and H’lo’s! and How are you’s! were melodic as the cries of spring birds.
    It wasn’t until after the Christmas holiday, when school resumed again in January, that Marianne Mulvaney turned a corner in the girls’ locker room and saw, to her discomfort—Della Rae Duncan. Just sitting there,