Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

  Watching the whole scene through the window, Sally put two and two together: a pistol had been fired, ding, and a boy had been shot. He was dead, of course. What else was she supposed to think? She climbed over the sill and rushed toward him, though not out of any sense that she could insert herself into this part of the disaster and come to his rescue. Rather, she went to him because she thought that either by accident or on purpose he’d put himself in the path of the bullet, preventing it from striking her.

  Yet by the time she reached him, he was propped up by the arms of one of the girls, panting, then breathing deeply, then shaking his head, shaking away the fright of it all. Well, then he hadn’t been shot, it appeared. He had merely collapsed in a dead faint. The idea of a fainting boy made Sally laugh aloud. But seeing the shine of embarrassment in his eyes, she changed her response to a forced solemnity.

  “Are you all right, Mole?” the girl named Belle asked.

  “Are you all right?” Sally echoed.

  “I didn’t mean… gee, Mole…,” Belle faltered.

  “You could have killed him,” Sally scolded, feeling a need to clarify Belle’s responsibility in the affair.

  “We checked first, didn’t we, Mole? Didn’t we? We all did, isn’t that right?” Belle pleaded for support, turning to the rest of the group. “The gun wasn’t supposed to be loaded,” she said. The others nodded and murmured agreeably.

  Sally decided that she deserved as much sympathy as Mole, the fainting boy. “You could have killed me,” she said.

  “Who are you, anyway?” Belle asked.

  Before she could answer, Mole said, “You could have killed her.” His tone was surprisingly reasonable, as if he were offering a simple observation. Sally was impressed. “You could have killed both of us,” he said. “Both of us with one bullet.” Sally was even more impressed. The fainting boy was turning out to be unexpectedly keen, with a calm, convincing authority. Sally liked the feeling of having come through a dangerous experience together. They both could have died with terrible abruptness, killed by the bullet that wasn’t supposed to be in the gun. Then they never would have eaten another meal or seen the sun rise again or even, if this were a possibility, gotten to know each other. Instead, here they were alive, looking into each other’s eyes, both of them searching for a clue that would tell them something about their prospects.

  When the fainting boy felt strong enough to stand, the party ended. They all went home, Belle up front holding the pistol like a dead rat by its tail, Mole leading Sally by the hand through the darkness along the rocky path to the street. “Careful,” he kept saying. His hand was clammy, the fingers spidery and strong. When he looked at her, his eyes seemed to widen more than was physically possible, with the pale skin at the corners folding into ruffles. Sally judged him to be no older than fifteen or sixteen and because of that she felt superior to him, the same way she felt superior to her younger brothers. And yet she liked being led by him along the path. It stirred in her a feeling of trust that was as unfamiliar as it was immediate.

  “Of course,” he’d said with a laugh after she’d told him her name. Of course she was Sally Angel. A name must suit its subject, and Sally Angel suited her. Dropping from the sky like that — she would be forever associated in his mind with the miracle of his survival.

  And why was he called Mole? “Such a funny name,” she said. No, she corrected, she didn’t mean funny, “not like funny-funny. Just funny,” she explained limply. Mole laughed at her and then with her when she joined in. He told her that his full name was Martin Oliver Langerton, and Mole was what his family had called him from the start.

  Sally asked him about the game back at the mill. He said that it was meant to be a harmless game. “Still,” he mused, if the gun had fired… if his hand had slipped and the gun had fired…? He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to imagine himself dead. He wasn’t dead. He was alive, truly alive, and to prove it, look.

  He whooped as they broke through a screen of brambles and stepped onto the road. Then he lifted her in his arms, spun her around, and set her back down. The fainting boy was turning out to be bursting with giddy spirit. “You’re swell to come along like that,” he said in gratitude. “You’re a real nice gal,” he added. And, more solemnly, with a touch of awe, he murmured, “You’re…,” and then he paused for a long interval, searching the night sky for the right word. “A peach,” he declared.

  Sally flinched, as if she’d caught a splinter in her toe. She was, by his estimate, a peach. Wasn’t that kind of noncommittal? Well, she told herself, it was a start. She’d found at least the possibility of something more.

  They headed toward the block of buildings on Main Street, and Sally motioned with her free hand to indicate that the Barge was her destination. But as she approached the tavern, she began dragging her feet, making each step more sluggish than the last, slowing nearly to a standstill in an effort to give the boy named Mole ample opportunity to say what she wanted to hear. And when they’d reached the door and he still hadn’t asked if he could see her again, she asked him.

  The next evening, as Sally stood at the mirror in Gladdy’s front hall fixing her hatpins, she said coldly, “I won’t be at the Barge tonight. I’m going out.” She was surprised that Gladdy didn’t ask, Out where? for she’d been prepared to reply, Out for a walk. Gladdy didn’t ask her if she was going out alone. Sally didn’t say, Yes, though the truth was no. Gladdy, already four ounces into her bourbon, didn’t seem to notice or care that Sally had trimmed her hat with blue freesias and baby’s breath from her weedy garden. Stirring her drink with her finger, she’d spent the last hour reminiscing about long-ago summers when she used to chase the iceman’s cart down Volner Street in Amity. Those carefree, hazy days, before the war, before both her marriages went sour, before she’d seen the truth about men… She’d trailed off with “If I’d known then what I know now,” and by the time Sally was at the mirror, she’d fallen into a reflective silence. When Sally said good-bye and headed out the door, Gladdy didn’t try to stop her. Other than lifting a pinkie to wave as Sally left the house, she remained absorbed in her own thoughts and her bourbon, leaving her guest to drift away without bothering to ask when she planned to return.

  Sally had been excited about meeting Mole that evening, but Gladdy’s indifference threatened to put her in an ugly mood. She could have disappeared for good, and Gladdy Toffit wouldn’t have cared. No one would have cared. Ever since she’d left home to work for the Jensons at the age of twelve, it had been far too easy to run away and leave behind all that was familiar, or walk, like this, thump thump thump, down the porch steps and along the brick path, closing the gate behind her, making sure the latch clicked before she ambled through the cool summer twilight.

  But of course she wasn’t going away for good. She wasn’t even going away. She was just going to meet a local boy who’d shown an interest in her. This was how she probably would have spent many of her evenings back in Tauntonville, if she’d been allowed to grow up gradually, day by day, in an ordinary fashion — stepping out like this to meet up with an ordinary boy, a boy named Mole, who, thankfully, knew nothing about her past.

  And there he was at the end of the street, leaning against the hood of a car, resting on his elbows and blowing smoke rings. He waved at her with the hand holding the cigarette, scattering sparks as the ash dropped off. She waved back, pleased to find him waiting right where he’d promised to be.

  When she reached him, he grabbed her hand and shook it vigorously, as though he were sealing a business deal. She laughed loudly and abruptly but stopped when she saw the blush splotching his cheeks. He was easily mortified. She squeezed his hand to convey her pleasure at seeing him, and he cheered up, offering her a cigarette and waving his lighter with a flourish before extinguishing it with a loud click.

  “Mr. Mole,” she said in a husky voice, after exhaling smoke in a long, slow stream.

  “Sally Angel.” He pronounced her name
slowly, as if he were reading it from a list.

  “Where shall we walk to, Mole?” she asked.

  “Walk?”

  “Aren’t we going on a walk? It’s a real nice evening.”

  “I thought —”

  “You don’t want to walk?”

  He looked uncertain. “If you want to walk, we can walk. But, well, okay, let’s walk.”

  “Is something wrong?” By then she’d slipped her arm around his and locked elbows. They were walking along the side of the street, stepping around puddles left behind by a thunderstorm that had blown through that afternoon. Now, with the sun below the horizon, the sky was brilliantly clear, a dark, shining topaz.

  “How could anything be wrong when you’re around?” he said, a question that he delivered flatly, as if he’d been rehearsing it all morning. But when he smiled, it felt good and honest, with his inward smile matching the outward one, as far as Sally could tell. She already was convinced that this boy, this Mole, was the sweetest fellow she’d ever met.

  She bumped her hip against his, knocking him slightly to the side. He bumped back. She bumped, he bumped, and they staggered along the road, laughing together, bumping together, and suddenly rearing backward to get out of the way when a car came speeding around the turn.

  Sally and Mole clung to each other, still chuckling, as they watched the car, a stub-finned green Cadillac, go by.

  “There goes the cream-cheese prince,” said Mole when the car was out of sight.

  “Who?”

  “Heir to the throne.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know Benny Patterson?”

  “I haven’t been here long.”

  “The Pattersons own a dairy farm east of Fenton. They got rich selling cream cheese. Benny, what a gorilla. He bought that car with cash. Aw, will you listen to that.” There was a bird shrieking in the darkness, a jay calling and then answering itself. “Crazy bird,” murmured Mole. But Sally was still thinking about the prince of cream cheese speeding by in his Cadillac.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to drive around? I mean, if we could just get in a car and follow the road,” she said dreamily. Mole didn’t say anything, and Sally interpreted his silence as agreement. “If only I knew how to drive,” she continued. “Gee, I wish… if I had a car…”

  “You say you want to learn to drive?” There was an unfamiliar sharpness in Mole’s voice, and Sally guessed that he was envious of Benny Patterson’s fancy car and all the privileges that money bought. She decided to talk about something else, and the best she could come up with was to comment on the good smell of honeysuckle. She added, in an attempt to reassure him, “It’s nice to walk along.” But he didn’t let go either of her arm or the subject.

  “So you want to learn to drive?” he repeated.

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Some girls are flat-out scared.”

  “Bah, that’s just what boys think. They’re afraid their girls will learn to drive and then drive away and leave them in the dust.”

  “Where would you go, if you could drive?”

  “To Amity. To shop.”

  “And what would you buy?”

  She sensed that he was teasing her now, so she teased him back: “I’d buy you your own deck of cards.”

  “What do I need with cards?”

  “You’d get to call the game.”

  She laughed to show that she was joking, and he laughed along with her and then pulled her toward him, tipping his head down as she tipped hers up, their lips meeting in a brief, tender kiss that thrilled Sally not just because it was happening but because she sensed in it a bid to make something serious, respectful, and lasting out of their mutual affection. Sweet Mole with his menthol breath and tousled hair. He cared about her too much to take advantage of her. And she felt for him a different kind of attraction than she’d ever felt before, something that right here in its early stages was enriched with the possibility of permanence. She wasn’t certain yet — she hardly knew him, after all — but it could be that this kiss signified a release from all her troubles.

  “Mole.”

  “Sally Angel.”

  How could she let him think of her under that guise, a false name, a veil for her sins? My real name is…, she tried to say. I’m not…, she tried to say. “I…,” she began. But before she could utter another word he’d leaned forward and they were kissing again, their mouths open this time, their tongues moving greedily, their eyes squeezed shut. Oh, he was a nice boy, an innocent who assumed there was an empty place in Sally’s life that only he could fill. And he wasn’t far from the truth, was he? Maybe she hadn’t been looking for a boy like Mole, but now she was glad she’d found him.

  They finally came up for air, blinking, each waiting for the other to speak, the silence stretching into an awkward pause that Sally could think to break only by telling Mole that she needed to go home. Wasn’t that what a good girl was supposed to say? But she didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to go home. She had no home of her own and was fighting a swell of desperation when Mole asked in a whisper, “You want to learn to drive?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. She would have said yes to any question he’d asked.

  “Well then, I’ll teach you,” he announced, taking her hand and leading her around the curve of the road that had returned them — magically, it seemed to Sally, as though they’d crossed a fold of time and space in a single stride — to the street corner from where they’d set out on their walk. And at the corner was the car that had been parked there earlier, a tired old Pontiac with a webbed crack in the corner of the windshield and dents along one side, front to back, that were outlined in rusty scratches.

  The scratches were black in the dusk. The corner of the rear bumper was anchored with twine. Mole patted the hood as though to calm a nervous horse, and then he opened the passenger door for Sally.

  “Meet Phoebe.”

  “This is your car? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “You said you wanted to walk.”

  “But… this is your car? Really, Mole? You have your own car?”

  He didn’t answer. He’d already closed her door and was walking around the front of the car. She watched him settle in beside her and fit the key into the ignition, and she was reminded of the ride she’d taken four years earlier on the back of her cousin’s motorcycle. But this ride would be nothing like that one. She already was sure that this ride would be like the kisses she’d just enjoyed, marking the beginning of a story that would go on and on.

  She didn’t mind that the seam of her vinyl seat had split and she could feel the coil of the metal spring. She didn’t mind the dents and cracks. She felt the pleasure of Mole’s pride as he described the car to her, a ’46 Pontiac sedan complete with a radio and a heater that actually worked! To prove it, Mole turned the heater on, turned it off, turned it on and off again as he drove down the street.

  He had an odd way of driving, with his hands gripping the steering wheel as though to hold it on the stem and his foot pressing and then releasing the accelerator, creating a jerking motion that kept throwing Sally back against her seat. She wondered if he’d only recently learned to drive or even if he was old enough to drive. What did he know about the world? What did he assume about her? Surely it wouldn’t occur to him that she’d been through it. Or maybe he was wise enough to guess that Sally had secrets he didn’t want to hear.

  She had an impulse to divert him from this thought, even though he’d given no sign that he was thinking it. “Say,” she said, sliding her hand behind his neck, “where are you taking me?”

  “To the moon!” he cried. “Hold on, baby!” With that he pressed the accelerator, turning the car with a screech down a dark lane that led to a school and speeding around the front loop and into an empty parking lot, where he stopped so abruptly that Sally had to throw her hands forward to keep from colliding with the dashboard.

  “Your turn
,” he said in a tone that reminded her of the way her brothers would dare her, when she was just a little girl, to jump off a high rock shelf into the pool at the bottom of the gravel pit.

  But what Sally experienced that evening in Mole’s beat-up ’46 Pontiac sedan was not the sensation of falling. Nor was it much like the dangerous thrill she’d felt on the back of her cousin’s motorcycle. Rather, after she’d taken her place in the driver’s seat and Mole had showed her how to put the car in drive, she felt as though she were riding on a raft, carried by a steady current. Why, it turned out to be surprisingly easy to drive, almost effortless! She had only to rest the ball of her foot against the pedal and hold the steering wheel at an angle that kept the car moving in a circle, around and around in the parking lot, following the beams of the headlights.

  “I’m driving!”

  “Go ahead,” he urged. “Go a little faster.”

  She obliged, following the road that girdled the earth, speeding along from hemisphere to hemisphere. Mole turned on the radio and turned up the volume of the sportscaster who was reporting on last night’s headliner at the Elks Club, in which Abe Walden had been —

  “Dumped by Bruce Brewster!” Mole cried.

  “Who?”

  “Welterweight from Hornell, the best, good God, dumped on the seat of his drawers!” He hung on to the vinyl handle above the passenger door and swayed with the motion of the car. “Go for it!” he shouted as Sally changed direction and steered the car in a tight figure eight.

  Fast, faster, fastest. The darkening twilight gave the playground a strange depth, as if the flat field went on and on. The Pontiac sped round the parking lot in dizzying loops.

  So this is happiness, Sally thought. This was the power that would save her from her own mistakes. The ability to go anywhere, to just get in a car and go with the current, leaving everything behind.

  But now Mole was yelling that she had to do something, find something, figure it out for herself because whoops, he’d forgotten to show her the brake.