Weeds in Bloom by Robert Newton Peck Read Free Book Online Page A

to the entire world:
    TROJAN BUYERS NABBED!
    After a brief shoot-out, the Vermont Vice Squad announced that two underage criminals, Luther Wesley Vinson and Robert Newton Peck, wereapprehended on Saturday as the pair were trying to make their escape from a daring daylight shopping spree in the men’s restroom of the Diesel Fuel Truck Stop. Evidence was confiscated, marked, and identified as a package of American Hero. Both convicts are shackled, hand and foot, to await trial in a solitary maximum-security dungeon. The District Attorney expects a sure life-sentence conviction, claiming he has a key witness, a trucker named Harry, and another possible observer, who pleaded not to be identified and not to mention anybody named Gladice.
    We ran for at least a mile.
    Over fences, through bull pastures, splashing through a shallow crick and then pulling up to breathe.
    A close call.
    We stashed our American Hero in a variety of remote locations: Stoddard’s Ice House, under a rain barrel behind Higbee’s Hardware, and in assorted nooks known only to us.
    Unfamiliar with Vermont’s codified Statute ofLimitations, we waited and played it cool, spurning the folly of flashing the take of our caper to any of our socially underachieving classmates. After several nervous weeks, we concluded that the proverbial coast was clear. At last we could offer our American Hero its long-awaited debut.
    Its virgin excursion came on a Saturday night in May. As customary, we were allowed to come to town with our parents, wearing our good shirts, and promenade to and fro along a very short Main Street, to strut with the concealed confidence that Trojan ownership provides, and to give all the chicks a chance to admire our swaggering masculinity.
    We took turns carrying the American Hero.
    Having noticed where the high school boys packed theirs, we did likewise. Inside the right front pocket of blue jeans there’s another tiny pocket, about two inches square. Our mothers told us that this was a watch pocket. We both, however, knew its true purpose. It was where a tiger tucks a Trojan.
    Days passed, and then weeks, the inevitable changing of seasons, year after year. Several pairs of blue jeans were outworn and outgrown, yet my American Hero managed to adjust to the transition for close to a decade. There it rode, secure in itsdenim cockpit, ready to serve its ultimate purpose if ever the opportunity presented. Originally (we opened the package and peeked) it was white. But as the years flew by, it yellowed, turned green, and darkened into decay.
    There wasn’t another American Hero Trojan ever vulcanized that provided more pleasure than this one. Neither a French Tickler nor an Arabian Stallion. Mine, by sheer rubbery endurance, stretched time into a championship of chastity.
    At age seventeen, prior to entering the Army, I considered taking it with me. For an enlisted soldier, it seemed that one American hero might luck out and employ another.
    Instead, I stowed it among my assorted souvenirs of youth, left it behind, and marched away to war.
    Upon returning, I found it. The aging process had taken its toll. My perennial American Hero had retired to little more than a puny parcel of dust. Perhaps, I mused, I’d offer it to the Smithsonian, finally to prove my manhood.
    Yet it isn’t easy to part with a cherished keepsake.
    Though I considered establishing an Old Trojan’s Home, I didn’t relish the thought of having either Mama or Aunt Carrie learn the sordid truth of my reckless and feckless past. So, with anappropriate ceremony, I dug a hole and buried it.
    There, beneath the pristine Vermont topsoil, an American Hero still lies, a silent tribute to my unintended innocence, a monument to an eventual moral revolution that I had inadvertently spawned.
    I had conceived Safe Sex.

Joe
    N O ONE REALLY KNEW HIM .
    Or wanted to, because he smelled worse than a wet barn dog. Yet everyone in town recognized him.
    Joe was an orphan. If he’d had