“I’d rather do this.” David ate an onion ring in one bite.
“I don’t think there’s anyplace to get more gin.”
“I could go to sleep, Pop. I’m pretty wiped out.”
“We ought to call your mother.”
“At the hospital?”
“Nah. Not up there.”
“We’ll see her tomorrow.”
“Where you going to go, son? Austin?”
“Maybe so.”
“I don’t know if we can be any help. I don’t know how things will be day after tomorrow.”
“I’m not counting on anything.”
“Hell, I could be in Florida,” Saul said blandly, and took the check to the register.
“Florida?” David said in the car. “What’s this Florida?”
“It’s an expression,” Saul said. David did not press the matter, though “Florida” was not an expression he had ever heard.
When they got home the next day, Joyce Ellen and Marge were cleaning the extra bedroom. Joyce Ellen’s boxes were piled in the living room. “Oh Dad,” she cried, and threw her arms around Saul. He was astonished. “Oh Dad what?” he asked. She stepped back. “I’m so happy to be home,” she said, but her face was drawn and pale. She did not look happy at all.
23.
Leland heard that a fight was going to take place at the Fina station, and went by to pick up David. Sissy and David were both sprawled on David’s bed, reading old magazines discarded by the school library. “Do tell,” Leland said. Sissy wanted to go, too. They were in the dead hours of a Sunday afternoon, in the dead time between Christmas and New Year’s. What was a fight but a convocation?
Leland drove out of town, along the bare expanse of caliche-bed farm roads, to a remote intersection where there were already more than fifty cars parked along the sides. Leland swerved the car around and went back toward the main road a hundred yards, and parked. “They’re going to fight out here,” he told the other two. “And the cops’ll come, and when they do, I’m heading for this car as fast as my big feet can carry me, and when I get here, I’m splitting, riders or no riders, you understand?” Sissy was wide-eyed. David grinned easily. “You’re a real shit, Piper,” he said. “We’ll stick with you, what’s hard about that?” They pulled their jackets tight and fastened them.
It was not a gang matter, though there were two gangs out there. It was a fight between two boys. No one was saying what it was about; a fight, however public, could be about a private matter, of no concern to anyone but the combatants. A girl, a car, a dare, an insult? There was that dead time to fill. There was the eerie wintriness of the plains that, it was said, had driven more than one woman crazy. A lot of young people had come to watch. One of the combatants was leaning against the hood of his car, his jacket off, his black tee-shirt tight on his biceps. Other boys stood nearby with their hands crammed deep into their jacket pockets. They were saying things to him, making one another laugh. The second boy nosed his car up as close as he could maneuver it, parting the crowd like Moses did the Red Sea in the movie. He got out. His friends clustered quickly, calling out jeers and insults from behind him. To him they said, “Say hey. Cream the bastard.” He began to shrug off his Levi’s jacket as he walked toward the other boy, but before even one arm was free, the first boy bent low and accelerated without warning, fiercely plowing into his stomach with the force of a moving vehicle.
Sissy clung to David. Leland stepped ahead of them, leaning toward the scene, breathing with his mouth open. “Jesus,” he said. The boy had pulled his jacket back on. His face was bloody. At first it looked like he would never get started, but he found his own power, and knocked the other boy down and began to beat his head against the hard ground. The two boys rolled and banged on the caliche, their faces and arms covered with blood. After a minute or two all the booing and hissing and cheering from the onlookers had stopped. The boys fought in silence, except for their own grunts and the thuds of their bodies against one another and against the earth. In the sour winter light, the scene was tinged brownish-yellow. Little by little the crowd began to move back, as if it were dissolving. Along the edges, bystanders turned and went back to their cars and drove away. Only the close buddies stuck it out. David pulled Sissy back, and turned her and held her against his chest. The boys lay still on the ground. Some of their friends knelt by them. Leland turned. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.
In the car, Sissy touched David’s arm and his face, over and over, as if he were one of the injured boys. He said he was sorry. He did not know what he had thought he would see. He had been to drag races out there, once he had seen a wreck from which they took an unconscious driver, but he had never seen a fight. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he told Sissy. “What will you do now?” he asked when they pulled up in the alley behind her house. “Write in my notebook,” she said. “Before I forget.”
David, Ellis and Leland went driving around in Wayne Hansen’s new Chevy with Wayne and some other boys, but nobody was out yet. They drove all the way out to the meteor crater and got out and stood around and speculated on what it must have been like when a chunk from heaven split the earth. They drank the six-pack of beer one of them had brought, wishing they had more. They piled back in the car and drove through niggertown. Jack Parrish said he heard that some of Stripling’s gang had gone niggerknocking the night before: they rode slowly down the streets until they came up on a group of Negroes, then yanked out baseball bats and, picking up speed, roared by, getting in whatever licks they could.
Ellis said, “I’ve heard that ever since I first moved here, but I don’t believe it. Who would do that? For what?”
Parrish said niggers were a change from rabbits. Leland said, “If you know there were white boys through here last night making that kind of trouble, I want to get out of here as fast as this cherry piece will carry us.” Whooeee! they all yelled, and sped away.
There was talk about how to get more beer. Wayne said he thought his ID would pass. He was proud of it. He had spent hours slicing out the dates, transposing numbers, and sliding them back in, then laminating it. He passed the license around for them all to admire. “Shit,” Leland said. “You’ve got the best yet.” They bought malt liquor at a corner market, and parked behind the high school. Parrish said. “What this party needs is pussy.”
“I know a girl that might go riding with us,” Leland said. Ellis said, “I can’t stay out much longer.” He looked sleepy from the ale, or bored. He might have to go out with his father before dawn, to work.
The girl lived in a trailer down by the junkyard. Leland said she hung around with Nesmith and his buddies. That was how he knew her. He went up to the trailer door while they all watched from the car. She shifted her weight back and forth, one hip high and then the other, leaning against the door jamb. Someone must have yelled at her; she looked behind her, then stepped forward and shut the door. Leland stepped up close to her. He had one hand on her shoulder. She grinned and hung her head, then shrugged and followed him out to the car. She was wearing turquoise pedal pushers and a cotton blouse printed with kittens. She looked like she might be cold, but she had to sit on Leland’s lap, and it was warm inside the car.
They went to the park and killed the rest of the beer. The girl chugalugged half a bottle while they cheered. Someone asked her what year of school she was in. Nobody remembered her. “I don’t go no more,” she said. “I’m in beauty school.” There was a lot of grinning and rearranging of weight throughout the car. Parrish was sitting next to the girl and Leland’s was the lap she sat on. “What do you do for fun, hon?” Parrish asked, and laughed loudly. He bopped Wayne on the neck. “Fun, hon!” he said again. The girl had twisted around, leaning against the car door, facing the carful of boys. “Whatever I feel like I guess,” she said coyly, grinning. Parrish put his face over close to hers, stuck out his tongue, and slowly licked her chin and lips. The other boys went, Oooh, like a bunch of girls. Parrish fell against W
ayne and the steering wheel. “Bring me a pillow, Mama!” he said. “Turn down the BED!”
David was in the middle of the back seat, between Ellis and a boy everybody called Bull, because he had no neck. Bull said, “I think we could have fun right here.” He was a mean tackle who would not have anything important to do the rest of the year. The girl giggled. “There’s so many of y’all,” she said. She wrapped an arm around Leland’s neck. “And I’m sort of with Piper, ain’t I?”
There was a moment of clamor, Wayne, Parrish and Bull whistling and saying Piper wasn’t going to hold out on his buddies. Leland was not saying anything, nor David, and Ellis, without a word, simply opened the car door and sprinted away. For just a moment Leland caught David’s eye. He looked hapless, confused, half-pleased. David was disgusted, and bored, but the girl was asking for it, the guys were half-drunk, and he was trapped. If he made a big deal about this, they would talk about him all over school, what a bad sport, what a prude he was. He was not going to fuck her, that was the line, but what she wanted to do was her business. He did not think anybody would hurt her. What would they do that Nesmith’s bunch hadn’t already done twice over?
Parrish reached over and fondled the girl’s breast. She had not said what her name was. She squirmed uncomfortably. He put his other hand on her thigh. “Hey man you are on my LAP!” Leland protested. Parrish pulled the girl briskly over onto him. She squealed, her arms flailing, then settled with them around his neck. Now when Leland looked back at David he had a panicky, silly expression; David wanted to punch him. Parrish was deep-kissing the girl, who rearranged herself to straddle him. Wayne threw his arms up in mock-horror, against the driver’s window, like a man in a holdup, and Bull picked up all the ale bottles one by one to drain the dregs. There was a feeling like static in the car, like something might ignite.
“Out!” Parrish said suddenly. He shoved Leland’s shoulder. “Let us OUT of here.” The girl scooted into the empty space Leland left, looked around at the rest of them, then climbed out of the car. Bull called after Parrish as he climbed out. “I’m next.” The girl stuck her head back in. “I ain’t gonna fuck all of you,” she said weakly.
“Man, this is lame,” David said in a moment. Leland was back in the car, leaning forward, his forehead on the dashboard. Bull opened his window and, leaning out, aimed a bottle at a tree. He missed. “A horny man can’t pitch worth shit,” he said. It was not very long before the girl and Parrish came back. They were standing outside the door, talking. She said no, she wouldn’t; he said she sure as hell would. In a flash Bull had left the car and had run around to where they stood. Now the girl was between the two boys, whimpering and fussing. David leaned over the car seat and said, “Let’s go, Wayne. We’ve been out long enough.” Wayne, always the follower, did not reply. Leland said, “She’s friends with tough guys, this could make them mad.” Wayne said, “Mad at you, shithead. This was your idea.”
David leaned hard into the corner of the seat, still warm from Ellis, and closed his eyes. He did not think he was getting much air in the stale atmosphere of the car. His chest hurt terribly. Through the closed window he could hear the girl’s muffled cries. He looked out. She was leaning against the front door, and Bull was pumping into her violently. “Jesus CHRIST!” David said. Leland, who must have felt the whole thing like a man sharing a bed, suddenly said. “I’m gonna be sick, shit, I’m gonna puke,” and shoved the door hard, against the weight of the girl. He only managed to open the door partway; his vomit spewed over it inside. David got out of the car as fast as he could and shoved at Bull, who outweighed him by forty-five pounds. Bull shoved back and sent him sprawling, but the diversion freed the girl long enough for her to pull her pants up and hobble a few yards away where she fell to the ground. By now everyone was out of the car. Wayne caught up with Leland, who was leaning against a tree, and hit him in the face with his fist, then went back to his car. Leland fell to the ground like a sack of onions. Five yards away the girl was in another lump. Parrish caught David by the shirt collar and shook him. “Stick with pansies, asshole,” he said. David steeled himself for a blow, but it did not come. In a moment the car, and the three buddies, were gone, leaving David, Leland and the girl. David threw his arms up toward the cold black sky. Then he went to see about the girl. She was weeping.
“Come on,” he said gently. “We’ll have to walk to Leland’s to get a car.” She held his arm and pulled herself up. Her mouth was bruised. “The big boy,” she said, and started to cry harder. Leland staggered over to them, rubbing his face.
“You guys hungry?” David said. “You eat, I’ll buy.” Both Leland and the girl looked amazed. “What’s your name?” David asked her, putting his hand out for her.
She squeezed it tightly. “LaVonne. Yeah, I’m hungry.”
That night Ellis called. “You listen to me, Puckett,” he said. “I don’t ever want to know you do things like that.”
David started to protest. “I didn’t do—”
“Stuff it! If I ever hear of it—because it won’t happen with me around—I’m not going to stand in the same sunshine as you, I will find another tennis partner. Do you get it? I’m not going to be partners with someone who takes girls on joyrides.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“You sat back there like a wooden Indian, and you stayed, didn’t you?”
David did not think it fair that Ellis hung up before he could tell him he took the girl home, that he bought her a hamburger first. LaVonne. At least he did that; he did not run away. Leland drove, and waited in the car, while David walked her right to her door, like a date. He even said, “See you sometime, LaVonne.” She said. “Oh sure you will.” She gave her butt a little twitch before she shut the door.
24.
“I’ll understand if you have to say no,” Beth Ann said. She did not sound the least bit worried. “I know it’s short notice.” It was the day before New Year’s Eve. “But we’d really like it if you could come.”
Excited, a little insulted, he was clenching his free hand into a fist. Beth Ann had called the day before the country club dance to ask him to escort her. “It’s a family tradition. All the club families. Not just ours.”
“I did have plans,” he said.
“Well, if you can’t change them—”
“What happened to your date?”
“He’s not like a real date! Cliff Easterling, he’s a sophomore at Princeton? He’s like a cousin or something, our families are best friends.” She took her time. “He’s not who I’d ask, it’s just tradition.” He didn’t help her out. He knew she would say something and then he would say yes, but she ought to have to say it. The day before! “I’d ask you, wouldn’t I? He’s sick, so I can. Even my mother said, now you can take someone you really want to.”
He wondered who else she had called. “It’s formal,” he said. A prom for special people only. He could not go in his stained jacket.
“Oh yes, it’s a big party, it’ll be a lot of fun. There’ll be champagne. My daddy is getting the flowers for Mommy and me. I’ll have you a boutonniere here. All you have to do is come.” She knew he would. “I’ll pick you up, David. You will go, won’t you?”
He called his father at work. A light snow was falling. “I haven’t got any way to get to the store!” he said frantically. “You’ve got to come get me. I want to get a new jacket and pants. I’ve got my own money from the summer.” His father wanted to know, where’s the fire? He had to tell the rest. “The Kimbrough girl. I’m going to the club with her. It’s formal.” He held his breath, waiting for his father to say something ridiculing, but he did not.
All his father said was that he was busy; David’s heart sank. It would take him twenty minutes to walk, in this cold. But his father relented. “I’ll pick you up about 5:30, son, and bring you back. We’ll have the store to ourselves.”
“Do you think I’ll still get a discount?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” There was a sou
nd—a snicker, a sniffle? “Considering the importance of what you wear to the club.”
“Thanks, Dad.” He stopped worrying about what his father thought, and started thinking of what to tell Glee, and when to call her. He wondered if he should get a haircut.
At the store his father carried clothes back and forth, tucking and adjusting, seriously attentive, as to a client. David chose gray wool pants, a pale pink shirt, and a new white jacket. Bradley, apprised of the occasion, stayed to give advice, and threw in a bow tie for free. David viewed himself in the three-way mirror. The two men stood slightly aside surveying the net effect; David could not remember ever seeing them shoulder to shoulder like equals. He felt admirable, handsome, “likely to succeed.” Wasn’t his appearance working some sort of magic on employer and employee? “There’ll be a band,” Bradley said admiringly. He pulled his shoulders back. “The wife and me are going to the party at the hotel. We go every year.” He winked at Saul. “I usually get away for a little craps upstairs.” He straightened David’s tie. “Anybody asks, you tell ’em where you got this jacket, hear? They don’t come any better in Basin.”
“Don’t you know I’ll do that,” David said, with a perfectly straight face.
That night he took Glee to see a movie, and then he took her home early. He said it was too cold to park, and he wouldn’t come in, he wasn’t feeling well.
“You’re not coming down with something?” He could hear the panic in her voice, and he suffered a prickle of guilt.
He followed her into the living room, then stood between her and the open door. “I can’t go tomorrow,” he blurted. “There’s all hell over at my house, my sister whining, my mother crying, my father in a steam. There are—things—I’ve got to do.”
“There are things you’ve got to do on New Year’s Eve?”
“Really, Glee. You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like.” He pushed the door open behind him. “You’ll still have fun, you know you will.”
Walking Dunes Page 18
