Walking Dunes

by Sandra Scofield

  “There’s probably a stage, in becoming a writer,” he heard himself telling Beth Ann, “when you haven’t found the language for the stories yet, when what you have inside you is more like this, this awareness. You see the world in a different way from other people; you watch, like it’s your job to take notes, but the words to shape what you see aren’t there yet, because you need to keep watching a while longer. Lots of writers didn’t even start writing until they were thirty or forty years old. You can’t rush it. Maybe it’s not till you escape. Like Conrad going to sea, those English poets going to Italy, men going to war.” He had never told her he wanted to be a writer. This was all out of the blue. Maybe she had guessed; didn’t she say he was different, didn’t she say that was what she liked? He didn’t know if the Kimbroughs would think as much of writing as of tennis, though it was hardly a matter of one or the other. He stretched one leg, to ease a cramp that was starting in his calf. From where he sat he could see the French windows, a flat black against the night. Wasn’t it dangerous not to have any lights out there? Were they so confident no one would want to come in here, take things out of their beautiful house, maybe hurt them?

  “I have to get out of Basin,” he said with a fresh spurt of intensity. For a moment he lost the good feeling about where he was; he felt confined by the darkness, oppressed by the beams overhead, crowded by the girl on his arm. If she wanted him, she would have to understand, he had a lot of feelings that collected in him like steam and had to get out. A lot of those feelings were about this awful town. “I feel closed in here, which is pretty crazy, isn’t it, with all that huge sky, the land? Once last summer I was coming home from Fort Stockton. I parked the car out at the sandhills, and walked a far way from the road, so that I didn’t see lights anymore. I went down in one of the little gulleys and took my shoes off and sat there. The moon wasn’t bright; it seemed to say, I’m tired, I’ll shine some other night. But the sky was like cloth, close enough to touch. I sat there, kind of burrowed down in the sand, and I just knew, for that little while, that I was part of—part of everything. That if I put my hand out, what it touched was far away from Basin, far away from my whole life right now. It made me feel calm. I realized, if I just hold on, I’ll find out what I’m supposed to do. I’ve thought of being a lawyer, like your dad. That would be a good career. And I think I could be a teacher. Maybe I could be a college professor, that’s not so bad, is it? It sounds ok, doesn’t it? Professor Puckett?” Suddenly he felt his face flaming. On and on he had jabbered, like a crazy person, and saying how terrible Basin was, when her parents’ families had been here for generations. She probably expected to make her life here, just like them. What did she care if he wanted to write?

  Beth Ann didn’t say anything. He pulled his arm free and she slumped against his chest, her hair falling down her neck, her mouth slack. She hadn’t minded his rambling monologue; she was asleep.

  He and Patsy, talking about Antigone and her stubbornness, ended up talking about what it meant not to fit in. “You don’t know,” she said. “Look at you, Likely to Succeed.” He thought she sounded almost resentful. “But that doesn’t mean anything!” he protested. “Kids saw something that isn’t even me, some outside-David—” She interrupted him. “They saw how you stand apart and the distance is just right to make you look good. That’s not like being left out, not at all.” The sharpness of her voice stung him. “It’s not like you make any effort to fit in!” he accused her. In the play, Antigone defied Creon, even though it meant a terrible death, suffocation in a cave. You could look at Patsy, playing the part, and know Antigone would never, ever give in.

  She spoke without the edge of anger that had cut him. “I wouldn’t want to. Not belonging hurts, but it’s only now, and now is going to pass. I look at the other kids, and I know they don’t know what I know. They don’t know that the not-belonging leads to something else—”

  “Yes?” he asked eagerly. Why did he keep thinking she knew something he needed to know?

  “But I don’t know what it is!” she cried. “I just know I have to look for it away from here. And sometimes I feel afraid I’ll find it—that place that leads to my true self—too soon. What if I’m not ready? What if the place is just a metaphor?”

  “What?” he pressed. “What metaphor?”

  “For love. What if someone important comes in my life before those other things? What if he were here, in this awful place? What if you could love someone, when you haven’t been anywhere? What would you love with? Dreaming? Wanting?” A stillness fell over them. She had brought love into their conversation; how would he set her straight? He pulled away from her. “You’re being melodramatic,” he said coldly. “You sound like you’re working at being a poet.”

  Angrily, she retorted, “At least I work at what I want to be! At least I’m not afraid of my true self.”

  He went home agitated and paced his room. What did Patsy mean? Was he supposed to talk circles around anything sensible, to feed her fantasies about an artistic life? Was he supposed to match her writing, maybe make himself look bad if it wasn’t up to her standards? Was he supposed to love her?

  He thought of Beth Ann, asleep against his chest. She didn’t really care what he thought all that much; she just liked it that he was a thinker. It was like being tall. As for her, he had no idea what went on inside her head. She did not have a compulsion to reveal it. She knew that what she had on the outside was enough for David, for any boy.

  27.

  For Valentine’s Day he had bought a box of Whitman’s chocolates for Beth Ann. As he cut across the back of the courts, he caught up with Sissy heading home. She was cheerful and glad to see him. “You’re always so busy,” she said.

  He had heard from one of the kids in the play that she had been asking around if anyone had sleeping pills. He asked her if that was true. “I have a headache sometimes,” she said, in the same cheerful voice. “I thought if I took something, when I woke up it would be gone.” He did not think it was his place to lecture her. When they got to her house she said, “Come in, I’ll show you something.” They went in the back door. She called out a hello to her mother and took him in her room. She took her notebook from under her mattress. He asked her if she was still writing. She looked surprised. “Of course.” What she wanted to show him was a clipping she had cut from the newspaper, about a girl in Iowa who committed suicide on Christmas Day. “It says two hundred kids came to her funeral. She wasn’t a cheerleader or anything, she was just a girl who killed herself, and they all turned out.” She tried to show him the clipping, but he said he didn’t need to see it, he believed her.

  “Can you come to my house?” he asked, impulsively. “I’ve got something to show you now.” He could see she was pleased. She ran to tell her mother.

  He got the box of chocolates out of his closet. It had a wide red ribbon tied around it.

  “Is that what you wanted to show me?” She looked disappointed.

  “Why not?” he said. “Do you like the nuts? The nougats?” He let her choose first. They each ate several pieces. Then he asked her again about the sleeping pills. “You worry me sometimes,” he said. “It sounds like you want to hurt yourself.” He wondered if she had ever thought of getting away. Maybe it seemed too long until it would be possible; she was only a junior. Maybe it seemed harder to a girl. Where would she go?

  She was sitting on his bed, backed up into the corner. She pulled a pillow in front of her and hugged it, and giggled. “You know, David, if you were my friend, you would shoot me if I asked you to. My daddy has a rifle and a shotgun, too.” She had this silly grin. No way was it funny.

  “Go on, Sissy,” he said. “Things can’t be that bad.”

  She threw the pillow down and leaned her elbows into it. “Think what a story it would make,” she said in a teasing, playful way, like they were talking about putting toilet paper in someone’s tree.

  The comment about the story irritated him. Suddenly she felt lik
e a big weight around his neck. He took his time picking out exactly the right piece of candy and popped it in his mouth. “You think I’m up to that?” he finally said, trying to sound teasing himself. She said, “I thought you’d know how to do it right.”

  He said he had someplace he had to be. As soon as she was gone he rushed to the drugstore to buy another box of candy for Beth Ann. She was picking him up to have dinner at her house. He gave her the candy on the way. For some reason he did not understand, he told her about the first box, embellishing things a little. He told her about knowing Sissy from the hospital, about being neighbors. According to his story, he gave Sissy the whole thing, after they each had a piece. “I feel sorry for her,” he said.

  Beth Ann acted bored. “Heavens, I don’t care who you give candy to, David Puckett. But I don’t see why you want to be around that girl. She’s too weird for words.” Actually, he was surprised that she knew who the girl was, and said so. “Well, who else looks like her? Like a little lost bird?” Beth Ann said, tossing her beautiful head. It bothered him, that Beth Ann discarded the subject of Sissy so disdainfully. What would she say if he told her, I see a lot of what she sees, I get afraid and desperate, too, only I’m a little stronger, a little luckier. Not such a lost bird. After dinner Beth opened the candy at the table, but only her father and David ate any. Her mother made a nice show of choosing a piece, then barely nibbled at one corner of it, which, David supposed, was more polite than refusing. He wished he had bought flowers. There were always flowers in this house, in tall vases.

  When he got home he called Leland and asked him if Sissy talked funny on their dates. Leland said, “She never says anything funny.”

  “Christ!” David said. “I mean, anything strange. Does she talk about murder, suicide, that sort of thing?”

  Leland laughed heartily. “She reads the paper just like me, did you know that? She always knows what crazy thing happened. Did I tell you about the couple that couldn’t get their kids to sit still for Christmas pictures—?”

  “Aren’t you the perfect match?” David interrupted, and slammed down the phone.

  He took his father’s car and went to Patsy’s. He had something for her, too, a copy of The Prophet. It was only eight o’clock, but she was in her pajamas. She said she was studying. She took the book and thanked him. They were both standing by the door. “Guess I’ll go on then,” he said, embarrassed by her lack of enthusiasm. What had he done to her? Brought her a present!

  He left her place, kicking the dirt. If he had taken a copy of a romantic book to Glee Hewett, she would have been thrilled to death, even if she never did read it. He had given two girls gifts on Valentine’s, and neither one had shown any particular appreciation.

  He felt a gush of pure lonesomeness for Glee. He had seen her less and less, almost as if she had found a new route around the school. Once she had come in during his library aide time and checked out a book from him, and she acted like he was the old maid librarian.

  He parked a few houses down from her house and got out and leaned against the car, thinking about seeing her. The lights were out in the living room; either they were watching TV, or everyone had gone to bed. It was not so very late. Stealthily, he walked across her neighbors’ lawns and went along the side of the house to the back corner where her room was located. He did not want to frighten her, but he did not want to go to the front door, either. He picked up a pebble and threw it lightly at her window. Her curtain was drawn. He waited a minute, then ran back to his car.

  She called him a little while after he arrived home. “Were you at my house?” she asked timidly. “Were you just here?”

  “Did I scare you?”

  “Somebody running in your yard in the middle of the night, isn’t that a reason?” she said, her voice a little stronger.

  He thought she was teasing him, and laughed. “It’s not nine o’clock,” he said. What would it hurt to see her again?

  Her voice came out in a long strangled noisy rush. “I want you to leave me alone, Davy! I’m dating somebody else now—”

  “Dickie Huber!” he said. He had seen them in the halls.

  “Yes, Dickie Huber, and it’s none of your business, you hear? I don’t want you to even say hello when you see me. I want you to leave me alone, finally and for good, so I don’t go around hoping you’ll come back again. So I’ll know you’re really gone, now that you’re screwing Miss High and Mighty Beautiful Kimbrough!”

  He was so shocked he held the phone out from his ear an inch, as if it were hot. He could hear her sobbing. “Listen, Glee,” he said, “Beth Ann Kimbrough doesn’t screw around.”

  “What you never understood was that I don’t either. Only you did. You’re the one who screws around.”

  He practiced tennis furiously. One day he slammed a ball right into Sandy Holt’s thigh. Hey, lighten up, Puckett, the other guys said. The wind blew every day. It made them all giddy. The kickoff tournament of the season was right there in Basin in March, the West Texas Relays, originally a track meet, since expanded to include tennis. It was the one meet at which West Texans had an advantage. They practiced in the biting wind, they batted balls with grit blowing in their faces, they knew the ragged courts like their own back yards. Boys from other schools got red faces and their eyes streamed tears. How do you stand it? they asked.

  Ellis was working out with Burt Lasky, too, playing singles. “What’s with Lasky?” David asked one afternoon. He felt just the least bit deflated when he played without Ellis. They all rotated among themselves, everybody played everybody sometime, but this Lasky business was getting to be a steady thing. Ellis was casual about it. “He comes at me stronger than the other guys,” Ellis said. David realized his partner was as serious about the singles competition as he was about their team. Ellis boxed at his bicep. “I know all your moves, Puckett.” David was peeved, he could not help it. “I’ll see what I can do about that,” he said.

  28.

  He saw his father with the young woman again. They were going into Woolworth’s, where there were booths in the back and a snack bar. He waited on the sidewalk for them to come out. His father went back to the clothing store. The woman walked down the block in the other direction. As soon as Saul was inside, David ran to catch up with the woman. She pranced along snappily on her high heels, giving the illusion of speed, but in fact not moving so quickly. A lot of her motion was side to side. She was wearing a big full skirt and a crinoline that made it stick out stiffly. He came up behind her and called, “Miss, Miss.” He knew it sounded stupid, but what could he say? He came up beside her. “Excuse me,” he said, just about out of breath. “Could I talk to you a minute?”

  She stopped so abruptly he almost lost his balance, stopping too. “Who are you?” she asked, calmly; she knew a person would have a reason to want to talk to her. When he told her he was Saul Stolboff’s son, she did not look the least upset. If anything, she had a concerned look, like a nurse. She was not as young as he had thought at first, she was maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine. “My car’s right here—” she pointed. “Why don’t we sit in there and talk.” She had a pleasant voice, almost free of twang; she had to have come to Basin from some other part of the country. He climbed into the car, relieved that it was so much easier than he expected. Then, when he realized she was waiting for him to speak, he could hardly breathe for the anxiety he felt. She had that same patient, almost worried expression, but she wasn’t exactly helping. Why did he have to say anything? How could she not know what he was thinking? That’s my father you were with.

  “Your father is a serious man,” she said.

  He thought of Saul reading War and Peace.

  “A sensitive, special man.”

  He could only stare.

  “I know this must be confusing for you, but you must see, it’s not your business. It’s nothing for you to think about.”

  It was as if she had pulled a cord that opened him up. “Of course it’s my business!” he sa
id. “My father left us once. He could do it again.”

  “Do you think that would be up to me? That I could make it happen or not happen?”

  He thought about that for a long moment. If you were stuck in your life, you might not see another way, unless a person came along to show you. “My mother—” he began, and faltered.

  “Your father is a philosophical man. He sees the way life hands you your cup of pain. Of course there’s all that history, with your mother.”

  “Nineteen years.”

  “But when you’ve drunk it, you don’t have to sit there holding the cup, waiting for more. Life isn’t a sentence handed down to you.”

  “I think he thinks it is.”

  She smiled, a little smugly, thought David. “Another person can make you rethink your convictions. That’s a benefit of dialogue.”

  “And is that what this is about—you and my father? An affair, about philosophy?”

  She said sharply, “Love is based on respect. I think your father is a very intelligent, very sad, very good man.” She did not say, sexy, but the word was in the air.

  “It is an affair?”

  She took her keys out of her purse and put them in the ignition. She had wonderful legs. “I need to go. David, isn’t it? David, you can’t stop things that are in motion. You just don’t have that kind of authority in your father’s life. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. It doesn’t even have to do with your mother. It’s all about Saul.”