The Trailer Two Spaces Down

By Frank Herbert Spittle

THE TRAILER TWO SPACES DOWN
a novel by
Frank Herbert Spittle

Boy, oh boy. Had he guessed that his knock on Mrs. Turley's kitchen door would result in Grandfather nail-gunning him to the wall by his scrotum, Montgomery St. John would never have mounted those back porch steps the summer morning in '62.
He is discovered upstairs in bed with his high school girlfriend's mother--by the woman's husband. The enraged spouse is ultimately assuaged by Montgomery's mother, who promises a visit to the wood shed, led by the hand of their family's patriarch.
Here's novelistic story telling, painted across a broad canvass that releases crackling energy. With quick-sketch portraits of characters in conflicted scenes, The Trailer Two Spaces Down serves up one insightful anecdote after another. The novel's protagonist struggles with extraordinary challenges and temptations on his journey from hormonal adolescence to uneasy middle age.
This serious minded boy adores his mentor grandfather, a Franciscan brother living in Malibu's retreat house. The older man works to sort out the pieces in the boy's sexual missteps and counsels his weekend guest through sessions the young lothario recognizes as allowing for no bullshit. The result is a mutually arrived upon life plan. First, Montgomery will resolve to avoid near occasions of sin, then move to exert control over his future. He'll map a career search, one that prioritizes self-fulfillment, while acknowledging service useful to the world.
Through the ensuing years Montgomery strives to earn God's approval while he struggles to work the plan. Attempts at holding to the plan's resolutions involve unconventional tactics while he works through an anguished youth toward a tumultuous manhood. Back home from his session with Grandfather, he's present when his catechism class hosts a visiting foreign missionary. The man's stories capture Montgomery's imagination and he decides to enter the seminary to become a Maryknoll priest.
While a missionary in Bolivia, Montgomery's disturbed that needy children neither read nor write. The zealous Father St. John becomes dispirited by unsuccessful attempts to rally interest in building a one-room cinder block school. He resigns the priesthood to enlist in the U.S. Navy.
Serving in Viet Nam, thoughts that motivated his determination to protect native Catholics from Communist adversaries evaporate when he witnesses the carnage. A wounded warrior, tastes the anguish of the lie of war. Montgomery reworks the plan--he'll throttle his intensity by observing more and participating less in life's serious aspects. He'll pursue the secular lifestyle.
Back home, the civilian scrimps by on low wages scrambling to break into professional golf. He discovers a special lady living two spaces down in his Southern California trailer court. Following a courtship punctuated by disturbing anonymous threats, they marry. A son and daughter complete Montgomerys secular dreams, until in their teen years the St. John's marriage-survival needle falls ever closer to zero.
A dangerous shooting, initiated by his wife, and her later attempt at suicide, have his children demonstrating insecurity that further unhinges him. Her mental condition deteriorates, and Montgomery can risk no more of his wife's acting out her psychotic impulses. Finally her bizarre behavior traumatizes both husband and children. He seeks conservator status and she is court-ordered to psychiatric confinement. In two years she dies.
Since birth, Montgomery has been denied the particulars surrounding his biological father. When Mother dies, taking with her his long sought-after secret, an accidental discovery provides the puzzle piece that leads to an individual who never knew he'd fathered a son. The man and his wife form a fast relationship with Montgomery and their new-found grandchildren. A substantial trust is arran

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465319418

Frank Herbert Spittle

After thirty-two years dodging spitballs in the front of classrooms that frequently held aspiring delinquents, Frank Herbert Spittle switched teams. He sat down and recorded mischief-packed escapades in two books of zany yarns describing his youthful hijinks in Can You See Me Now? and Sailor, Write Your Mother. Two later books featured Frank’s now popular protagonist Montgomery St. John. In writing The Trailer Two Spaces Down and Near Occasions of Sin, the author harvested a boundless curiosity and the experiences from a rich life. The two fast-moving mainstream novels launched Frank into what he describes as “the satisfying lifestyle of a writer—without deadlines.” While a teenage Eagle Scout, the author of 3 to Get Ready quit high school to enlist in the US Navy as a seaman recruit. He served on active duty for five years, earned a GED aboard the destroyer USS Ozbourn, saw action in Korea, and advanced in rank to chief warrant officer while later serving in the reserve. After receiving his master’s degree, he went on to play leadership roles in the US military, corporate public relations, and California education. In fifty-three years of marriage, his wife Darlene and he reared two daughters to individual successes. Frank has explored thirty-two countries. He’s received local recognition as Toastmaster of the Year. All of this capped off by a career arguing ratios, proportions, and the Pythagorean Theorem with thousands of rambunctious teens. He makes his home in Laguna Hills, California, where he writes daily, enjoys frequent travel, and often yearns to scratch that itch for adventure.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Sweetie, Call Me Sylvia

Boy, oh boy. Had he guessed his knock on Mrs. Turley’s kitchen door that summer morning in ’62 would result in his grandfather nail-gunning him to the wall by his scrotum, Montgomery St. John would never have mounted those back porch steps.

Since Spring break he and Julia Turley had often ridden their bikes together, he with a Jack of Clubs secured by two clothes pins, snapping against the front spokes of his Western Flyer. So cool. It mimicked the exhaust sound from a revved up motorcycle.

Despite his mother’s insisting he was handsome, the fifteen-year-old thought of himself as too skinny, too tall, and having much too long a nose. But after only one ride together, Julia had taken him home for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Now their high school friends referred to them as steadies. Monty liked that. He’d met her stay-at-home mom and later the father, an Assistant District Attorney. Clayton Turley had clapped him on the shoulder and ordered, Now Son, don’t you be a stranger. You come by and visit whenever you’re in the neighborhood. Her parents seemed caring, really neat people who wanted to get to know their daughter’s friend.

On a slowly unwinding vacation morning, Monty swung by Julia’s house to invite her for a bike ride through Hollywood Park’s vast parking area. They often played bike-tag at the race track during off season, gliding over the vast black-topped parking areas and maneuvering the maze of deserted pedestrian areas while each peddled to escape the player last tagged.

Mrs. Turley answered his hesitant rap. The woman, Monty figured her to be about his mother’s age only much more attractive, peered around a curtain hung across the door’s small window. He took half a step back, confronting an only partially made-up morning face. He watched her clutch at the top of her housecoat and run fingers through her hair several times before unlatching the door. Facing her, Monty felt uneasy interrupting the housewife’s morning. From the look of things it might be an inconvenient time.

Julia’s out, Sweetie. Okay, Mrs. Turley, I’ll catch her later. Just wanted to see if she’d like to play bike-tag at the track. He returned to his bike and had picked it up when she called after him. Wait. You come on in. She won’t be long. Mrs. Turley held the door open wide and stood aside. He thought for a moment of where else he might go, decided there was nowhere, and laid down the bike. Entering he brushed past her, inhaling a musky, just-out-of-bed scent. Monty self-consciously lowered his eyes and proceeded to the center of the kitchen and waited, unsure of his next move. Julia’s mother gestured toward the breakfast nook. I’ll make some cocoa.

Monty slid in across from a folded newspaper and lipstick-branded coffee mug. He watched the robed woman pour milk into a pan and add a heaping spoonsful of chocolate mix, rattling on about her Julie studying serious dance just as she had in her own high school days. In seconds she produced his steaming chocolate. The inviting cocoa frothed high above the cup’s rim. Mrs. Turley slipped in opposite him. Sorry, no marshmallows today, Honey. Leaning her head coquettishly, Julie’s mom smiled and reached across to pat his hand. You’re sweet enough already.

He caught her scent again and, dropping his eyes, cupped the steaming mug between both hands, pretending to concentrate on the cocoa. Thanks, Mrs. Turley. He bent forward and puckered for a cautious sip.

Monty, we know each other well enough for you to call me Sylvia. She shifted to stretch out both legs. Her crossed feet rested on the upholstered bench beside him until she pulled them back to flip off each black feathery mule. They clacked, one-two, against the linoleum and she resettled herself.

Is Montgomery a family last name?

No, Ma’am. I’m named after British Field Marshal Montgomery.

Sylvia, she corrected him, nudging his shin with her toe beneath the table.

He shifted his leg. My mother admired Field Marshal Montgomery. They’d met when she interviewed him for her school newspaper. l got my middle name from my grandfather, Ansel.

And where does Grandfather Ansel live?

He is a Franciscan Brother at the Retreat House in Malibu.

Do you see him?

Oh, yeah. He comes to visit us and we visit him. I’ve even stayed over and had breakfast with the priests.

Sounds like you’re very fond of your grandfather.

He baptized me when I was a baby in the hospital. He’s great. He calls me the family’s prince. Monty felt his cheeks blush, realizing he was beaming an especially big smile thinking of Grandfather.

They talked about September’s school classes and she asked about his plans for college. All the time he sensed her bare feet occasionally stirring beside him. Her housecoat hung partially open, exposing the beginning of a creamy breast. Sylvia gathered the top but, unsecured, it soon slipped away again.

Does she have to hold me with her eyes this way? He felt a tinge of embarrassment, hoping she hadn’t noticed his stolen glances while he pretended to concentrate on the mug of cocoa.

At an increasing speaking rate Mrs. Turley, Sylvia, shared how she’d spent Denver summers during high school, first as a majorette and then as a cheerleader. She moved her story along non-stop as if, should she pause, her goal might be lost. Monty thought she acted wired.

He flinched when a bare foot came to rest against the bench cushion between his open legs, then tried nonchalantly to press his body back and eased upward in his seat. On edge, Monty felt his lip twitch when he became conscious of an involuntary swelling and realized he must have had the woody for some time. While an everyday occurrence, he always felt anxious among others, fearing discovery.

Mrs. Turley’s face showed no emotion when she shifted position. "Where were you born, Monty?"

Berkeley, California, Ma’am. My mother was a journalism student at Cal.

Sylvia, Monty. Sylvia. And your father?

I have a step-father, Sean St. John. He adopted me after my mother and he married.

And your real father, where is he?

I don’t know, Ma’am… Sylvia. I think he died. Mom doesn’t talk about him. My step-father is a writer.

Really? What has he written?

"The only one I’ve read is My Heart Stands Sentinel. I did a book report on it in English."

Should I read it?

I don’t know. It’s pretty sexy.

Humm.

Montgomery hoped he’d concealed his involuntary shiver. A runaway rivulet of perspiration trickled down between his shoulder blades. Another sentence or two, and Mrs. Turley pulled in her legs and searched about with her feet for the mules. Slippers in place, she slithered from the nook and stood beside the table a moment, as if she’d just remembered something.

There’s a job I need help with upstairs. Will you give me a hand with it, Monty?

Without waiting for his answer she moved toward the dining room, and stopped to turn in the doorway as if to ensure herself he was following. The morning sunlight streamed through the front windows outlining her curvy silhouette.

Come on, it won’t take but a minute.

Be right there. He hoped she’d go ahead and not see him rise from the booth. He stood and as soon as she’d left, thrust a hand deep into his pants’ pocket to adjust the uncooperative erection. Following her up the stairs, her swaying motion now at eye level, he felt inexplicably uneasy entering a part of the Turley home he’d somehow felt off-limits.

Chapter 2

More Than He’d Bargained For

Monty stopped at the open double-door entrance to a bedroom. Sylvia continued in toward a large unmade bed and, to his amazement, let her robe fall to the floor. Nude, she stepped out of the housecoat tangled about her feet and turned to face him. Except for childhood glimpses of his mother, he’d never seen a nude woman. Heart pounding, his eyes traveled downward toward her chestnut triangle. He felt himself staring helplessly.

No more talk of Denver summers. Mrs. Turley didn’t allow time for her prey to consider, but extended both hands to deftly unbuckle his jeans and draw down the zipper. Her thumbs hooked into each side of the elastic in his jockeys and she began to lower them, along with his trousers. Monty’s erection impeded the downward movement like a wall’s coat peg. Sylvia shifted one hand forward and disengaged the clothing to lower everything to the boy’s shoes. Seductively she guided Monty toward the bed, inching him along in tight restricted steps. At the bedside she turned him, her hands on each of his shoulders. The naked lady-of-the-house gently guided her daughter’s friend down to a seat along the edge of her bed.

Lightheaded, almost dreamlike, he moaned a audible Uhhh and awaited her next move. The unusual perspective of looking down at himself while nearly nude, fully exposed with pants around his sneakers, made him self-conscious. He marveled at the otherworldliness of his upward-reaching shaft dominating the scene, demanding attention from each of them.

Without speaking Sylvia Turley dropped to her knees, bending over him. Cascading hair completely hid her face while she bobbed rhythmically. Monty felt darts charge down his legs like sharp little mice feet. They raced through his buttocks and deep into his core. He quivered, then shook uncontrollably for ten long seconds until he finally sensed a complete emptiness.

She raised her head and smiled up at him. Now doesn’t that beat bike-tag at the race track?

He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. He felt near losing consciousness – his first orgasm with another person present. Novel. Electrifying. Confusing. He began to cry. He couldn’t help it. He felt like a dope, but couldn’t stop. Mrs. Turley sat beside him and pulled his head to her bosom while she eased backward with him cradled in her arms. Cooing softly, she stroked his hair, back and buttocks. Spongy breasts enclosing his face made him aware he had never dreamed he’d see this day until marriage – so far off in another world. This was adult life he’d only seen flipping through worn pages of Tijuana Bibles, erotic comics boys traded around the school yard.

His crying moved to jerking gulps of air, until his chest gave a final heave and he instinctively moved to cover a breast with his face and proceeded to bring the other to his ear, then both against his eyes like a playful baby. Her searching fingers fondled him and in moments he was aroused again. Sylvia urged her boy-toy upward like one would a marionette and settled Monty atop her. With one hand her nails explored the hair on the back of his neck, then pulled him down to her open mouth. Beneath him he felt her other hand guiding toward the unknown, and finally release when he sensed her warmth begin to enclose him.

A monumental day. A day of firsts. The hungry cheerleader from Denver had bounced and moaned and thrust her tongue into his ear and deep inside his mouth. He searched, wondering who he’d ever be able to share the experience with, and realized there was no one. It took longer to release the second squadron of pigeons. When breathing returned to near normal and his head cleared enough, he felt overtaken by a pressing urge to leave her – immediately.

Monty blustered, I have to go, and scurried for the edge of the bed – now their bed. Sylvia’s face registered a different plan while she hurried to encircle him with her arms and legs and snuggle against his back.

The temptress exhaled, Julie won’t be home from her lesson for another hour. Summers she dances every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Monty gently disengaged himself and moved toward the doorway, fumbling with his trousers. Without looking back he lied over his shoulder, I forgot. I have something I have to do, and hustled down the hallway toward the stairs.

Monty, Darling, wait just a moment. Her tone revealed she was rising to follow. But the young lover was out the back door and peddling down the driveway before she could manage the stairs.

* * *

All through the next two weeks, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, like a delivery boy, he presented himself at the Turley’s front door, ready for action even before pressing the bell. Had Julie answered his impatient ringing, there was no way he could have concealed his excitement. He even tapped his savings toward a Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue LP, to purchase what he felt were sexy under shorts, silky taupe boxers.

Monty told no one. Uninvited thoughts of Sylvia and scenes from his new found pursuit replayed in his head, stubbornly lodged there day and night. He cried again one Monday evening, struggling to get to sleep, and thinking of nothing but the next day when he’d be with her.

On Thursday morning, August 12, at 10:15 am, Monty lay upstairs with Julie’s mother. Butt naked and intent on business, the couple bounced the bed’s headboard repeatedly off an exterior wall. As had become her way, Sylvia raised her hips by arranging a pillow beneath her. Each time she cried his name he felt more secure in the evolving role of sex-master. He was actually screwing someone fantastic, who didn’t care about the zit beside his mouth covered by pink blemish cream.

Now feeling experienced and in charge, he luxuriated in nature’s ultimate coupling – so new for a bike-riding teen. Her purr of satisfaction escalated to grunts, then wails reminding him of the film Exorcist he and Julie had watched from loge seats.

Just when he questioned the neighbors overhearing their ruckus, she startled him by bolting upright and screeching. Clay. Wait. This isn’t what it seems. Heart in his mouth, Montgomery St. John was no longer aroused.

Chapter 3

Time to Face the Music

Monty strained to look back over his shoulder toward the source of their interruption. Framed in the bedroom’s doorway, Clayton Turley focused directly on the two of them. With a feeling like heading over a cliff, Monty separated himself from the man’s wife and hurried from the disheveled bed.

His mouth filled with the sourness of fear, while he prayed his earlier assessment of Clayton Turley as a neat guy would hold true through all this excitement, wherever it was headed. Speechless, and trying to cover his nakedness, the now unseated sex-master shook like a man stricken with St. Vitus’ Dance. He hustled about the room gathering his things, hopping on one leg to pull on his trousers. Shorts went into a pocket, socks in another. Bending on the run, he scooped up shoes and shirt.

The frightened youngster’s voice returned long enough to utter a feeble, Excuse me, while he squeezed past a heavily breathing Mr. Turley, who hadn’t moved.

The husband finally shifted slightly to allow Monty tight exit space and growled, I’ll take this up with you later, you little shit. You haven’t heard the last from me.

Clearing the first three stairs, Monty heard the sound of whiny pleading behind him. Oh Clay, please hear me out. I can explain everything. It’s that damn medication you and Dr. Perry insist I take.

When he heard Mr. Turley shout, he paused a moment to listen. At Mr. Turley’s response Monty’s heart rose to choke off his throat. "You shut your mouth, you crazy bitch. I have cases in the DA’s Office where hot-pants nymphos like you will do ten-to-fifteen years for gettin’ it on with a child. If that little prick’s parents press charges, all the juice in City Hall won’t keep your sorry ass out of the slam.

I don’t suppose you considered Julie, or our marriage, when you decided to bed down this kid? You obviously weren’t thinking of me.

There’d be no waiting around to hear more. Monty set a record pedaling his bike the two miles home, one arm still clutching clothing. In the St. John’s driveway, the Turley family Studebaker blocked his route to the rear of the house. Pulling up behind the car, Monty threw his entire weight to the back-pedal brake. He discarded the bike to race past the empty car, barreling around the back of his house in hopes he might slip into the sanctuary of his room unnoticed – knowing all the while that the large living room window had surely revealed him.

Inside the house he silently closed each door behind him, then sat on his bed staring at the door he’d latched. This last barrier stood like a ticking bomb. It didn’t remain secure for long. The sight of the turning knob caused him to lose it, and he began the crying business. His shoulders involuntarily hiked when the force of a wrecking ball struck the locked door. Monty fumbled to open the latch thinking his bedroom door might fly from its hinges.

Before him, closed fists riding on her hips, a flush-faced mother confronted her wayward son. Montgomery, come into the living room this instant. Monty’s stomach went into a tailspin. He dreaded facing Clayton Turley a second time. But to his surprise the quiet living room was empty. At the slam of a car door he looked out front in time to watch the Studebaker glide from the driveway, one wheel crushing his bike across its middle. Mr. Turley accelerated up Spruce Street, gray cotton candy belching from the aging Studebaker’s tail pipe. Monty stared painfully at the bike’s slowly turning front wheel, its spokes clicking against the Jack of Clubs.

Mrs. St. John collapsed into her husband’s worn recliner, then leaned forward, elbows on her knees as if to muster strength. She slowly shook her head in disbelief. "Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, you are alive at this moment because your father is in New York for the next two weeks. When he hears about this he’ll nail your scalp to the wall. I’m not sure I entirely understand the circumstances around that poor man’s coming here. He acted so distraught trying to re-create his reason for the visit.

Montgomery, I demand an explanation to this bizarre story that is wrenching your mother’s heart.

The explanation exercise always presented a dilemma. How little might he admit to and still get away with? How much did his mother already know? What exactly did Mr. Turley have the heart to share with her? It would surely have been painful for him to reveal everything involving the unfaithful wife’s indiscretions with her daughter’s high school friend.

Monty tap-danced his way through a very guarded account of why he thought Clayton Turley might have been so annoyed. They’re a funny family, Mom. Half the time I can’t figure out what’s up over there. Mrs. Turley wanted some help moving something in her bedroom. Next thing I know she’s on the bed taking a nap with her house coat kinda open. Yeah, yeah. The moving got her tired, I guess, and she lay down. Geeze, Mom, I start to leave quietly and there stands Mr. Turley. The whole thing…

A finish line nowhere in sight, he ricocheted about, his speech out of control, not wishing to volunteer the rope for his own hanging. To hurry a closing, he sputtered a line he’d heard earlier in the day. Mom, this isn’t what it looks like. He stumbled along until the exasperated woman held up a hand to stop his rambling.

She shook her head. You’re mouthing lies, basically lies of omission, perhaps not exactly false, but I hear only a smidgen of the truth.

Hildegard St. John decided that Monty’s absent step-father, even though he had adopted her boy soon after they’d married, shouldn’t have to get his hands dirty with this mess when he returned. She would once again lean on her father’s wisdom. Monty recognized his mother gathering wood for the execution bonfire.

She exhaled heavily and flopped back into the chair. I can’t pursue this further; my head’s swimming. This is definitely something for your grandfather’s insight.

* * *

After nine days of cringing at any sound of a car nearing his house, Monty received a large packet with Grandfather’s return address at the Franciscans’ Serra Retreat House. It contained pages of uncomfortable-to-read observations addressing young-male challenges, and an invitation to stay four nights with him in Malibu. While he read his way through the treatise, Mother silently positioned a packed gym bag beside the front door.

* * *

Dear Monty,

Freud hit it squarely on the head when he suggested that Civilization is paid for by the repression and sublimation of the sexual urge. Will you allow an old man, who loves you more than life itself, to rummage through a few ideas about your recent encounter with society’s reaction to its members’ universal urge to take up