Seventeenth Summer

by Maureen Daly

  Safe in the car, with the motor running, he soon got his confidence back. “Which of those sisters was which now, Angie?” he asked.

  I explained that the one who had taken the pie from Jack was Lorraine and that the other one was Margaret. “That’s the one I meant,” he exclaimed with relish. “The one with the long hair and the low voice. That’s what I call cute,” and he licked his lips in mock appreciation. “Boy, that’s something!” And his old swagger was back now.

  Jack nudged me again quietly and winked.

  Swede had a date with Dollie that evening and we had to cross the railroad tracks and drive beyond the river to get to her street. The house was gray and shabby and across the front ran a low wooden porch that sagged down in a mud lawn, pounded hard and flat as if children played on it often. There was a little red wagon across the sidewalk.

  “Just honk!” Swede said. “Dollie don’t like me to come in after her.”

  Jack honked the horn sharply twice and someone swung open the front door, bawling, “She’ll be right out!” and the door bounced back on its hinges. The top half was made of screening and the lower half was of brown cardboard, stuck in the wooden frame, and on one side of the porch was an old car seat, set up as a couch.

  “Dollie’s the oldest,” Swede explained, half in apology. “There’s four kids younger.”

  Just then an upstairs window screeched in its sash and Dollie stuck her head out and waved, “Be right with you, Swede,” and the window slammed down again. A few moments later she ran out, banging the door behind her.

  “Hi, there, kids,” she said to Jack and me, and “Hello, you big thing” to Swede, snuggling up to him playfully. Her face is so round and her mouth so baby-soft that next to Swede she looked like a doll.

  “Is Pete’s all right with you?” Jack asked.

  And from the back seat Swede shouted, “Don’t know where else!”

  Long hot days and sudden rains had given Pete’s a stuffy, musty smell and shot new, crooked cracks through the plaster. There were still ribbons of red, white, and blue crepe paper twisted in the lattice around the booth, hangovers from the Fourth of July, and the jukebox was blaring out music that rocked to the ceiling. We took a back booth and Swede ordered a Coke for Dollie, lit her cigarette, and went out to the bar. “He always does that,” she giggled.

  The old parrot in the corner was scrawking to itself, irritated with the heat, and the floor around the cage was littered with broken peanut shells, and the old bird swayed on the perch, breast feathers ruffled. It was cross and so dirty that we always took a booth as far away from the cage as possible.

  Jack and I danced together once and then Swede came back from the bar, crowding Dollie into the corner of the booth as he sat down, nudging her with his elbow till she giggled at him to stop. “You old meanie,” she pouted. While we had been dancing she had printed her initials and Swede’s on the wall with lipstick and was coyly waiting for him to notice. She looked at me and giggled again.

  But he finished his cigarette, flipped the butt at the parrot who scrawked and fluttered on the perch, rolling its yellow eyes in anger, and said, rising, “Let’s get out of this firetrap. This is the kind of night to be outside,” and he winked at Dollie. She drank down the rest of her Coke quickly and followed him, fluffing out her short hair with her fingers, signaling to us to come on. I guess she forgot all about the initials.

  “We might as well go too, Angie,” Jack suggested. “We can take a ride and, if you like, we can come back here again later.”

  In the car we turned the four windows down and the night wind came in, gentle and cool as water. Dollie sang as we drove in a soft, round voice as if her lips were pouted, and Swede joined her with a low boy-voice, improvising bass notes and joining in on the chorus. It was a beautiful summer night.

  Jack turned off the main highway onto a dry country road that spat up gravel against the sides of the car and sent bits of stone stinging at the windshield. The road twisted before us, taffy-colored in the moonlight, and the moon shifted first from the right side and then to the left as we turned, laying shadows all around us. Dollie’s singing dropped off to a quiet hum and then, after a while, stopped altogether. We drove and drove and the landscape was weirdly melancholy in the moonlight, touched with a lonesomeness and mystery that eluded it in the daytime. The trees along the roadside showed a light side to the moon, but secretly shielded the quiet, black shadows that lurked behind them, while on either side the fields lay flat and open. Something about the whole night made me want to whisper.

  We were far out in the heart of the country now, lonesome with single barns and dark silos. Jack turned into a narrow, muddy lane, and bushes reaching out along the ditch brushed the car. The wheels caught in the deep, dry ruts and swerved to one side. “Jack,” I said, “let’s stop here.”

  Without saying a word, without asking why, he pulled the car to one side and shut off the motor. Swede and Dollie were silent in the back seat. To the right was a broad field, spotted with dark bushes and rimmed with a line of dark trees. Behind them the moonlight was clear and mellow, sending long, lean shadows across the ground like thin fingers. “Jack, I’d like to go for a walk right now. Not far. Just out to where those bushes are,” and I pointed.

  Swede sat up straight in the back seat and shouted, “You kids crazy? If I’d known you wanted to go walking we could have left you in town to walk round the park!”

  “I just want to go as far as those dark bushes, Swede,” I explained, turning round to him. “It all looks so odd in the moonlight and I’ve never walked in a field like that at night before. Don’t you and Dollie want to come?”

  “No, thanks,” he answered, his voice slurring, “Dollie and me can be more comfortable right here in the car!”

  Jack leaned over to open my door and the thick roadside weeds brushed as high as the running board. I stepped through them carefully and he took my hand to jump the low ditch at the edge of the road. Puddles from the last rain lay in the hollows, glassy in the moonlight, and the ground on the other side was spongy beneath our feet.

  As we ran across the field the ground was bumpy beneath our feet like pastureland and I could hear him breathing hard as we went. Night dew was on the grass, cool and wet about my ankles, and here and there grew clumps of wild field daisies, their petals still open and white in the moonlight. Jack let go my hand and ran ahead. I tried to keep up with him, laughing and panting, stumbling in the darkness while my feet slipped on the wet ground. He didn’t stop till he had reached the trees and waited there till I came panting up to him, my shoes heavy with clay.The trees were farther apart than they had seemed at a distance, with broad, squat, half-stumps in between. I sat down on one of these to rest, and the sides were furred with layers of white fungus that crumbled like paper between my fingers, giving the air a damp, mossy smell like wet, brown leaves. Jack sat down beside me.

  From where we sat we could just barely see the car, black and shadowy at the edge of the gravel road with a small red wink of a tail light. No one but Jack would have come out here with me, without even asking why. I guess he knew why. We were near the dark clump of bushes I had seen from the car and the leaves were cool against my arm, their undersides wet with dew. I was still panting from running and laughing at the same time, a delicious feeling. The trees around us were old and tall, with thin, straight trunks and leaves that rustled high above us. Something quick, probably a rabbit, moved in the bushes.

  “I’m glad we came out here,” Jack whispered to me. “You can’t really see the moon from inside the car.” I nodded.

  A leaf from the bushes brushed my hand and I recognized the touch. Picking one of them I handed it to Jack. “Feel this,” I urged. “Feel how fuzzy it is on the other side. These are probably wild raspberry bushes.”

  He rubbed it gently against his cheek. “Oh, yeah,” and his voice was slow with awe. “It feels just how Dollie looks like she feels—from looking at her, I mean.” I laughed to mys
elf to hear him.

  Between the trees thick weeds grew high, black and secret in the moonlight; everything a different shade of darkness. All around us were muted night sounds as if the trees and bushes were whispering among themselves. Both of us sat listening. “Angie,” he said suddenly, “did you know there is no such thing as sound!”

  “What do you mean—no such thing as ‘sound’?”

  “Well, I’m not sure if I can explain it to you,” he went on, “but it’s what our teacher told us in science last year. For instance, if you break a balloon or something there really is no sound. There are sound waves sent out but unless there are ears—on people, of course—to pick up the vibrations, there is no sound.”

  “That hardly sounds right to me,” I puzzled … “I never heard anything like that before.”

  “Sure, Angie, and the teacher told us that long ago, in cavemen times, if those big dinosaurs went crashing through the forest, if there was no one there to hear them, there was no noise at all! Do you see now what I mean?” he asked.

  “Maybe I do,” I told him. “But it still doesn’t seem quite right. If the dinosaurs made noise and still it couldn’t be heard, I wonder what happened to it?”

  He put his arm around my shoulder. “Now look, Angie, it’s like this. Listen. Say that right now we aren’t here, you and I. Say we’re back in the car with Swede and Dollie or that we’re still out at Pete’s. There’s no one here. There isn’t a single car on that whole stretch of road. All of a sudden one of these trees cracks in the trunk and falls over. There is vibration but there is no sound at all because there is no one to hear it. Now do you see?”

  I tried to crowd my thoughts into one small space to concentrate. In my mind I could see the bare field in the moonlight with the dark row of trees standing. It was deadly silent. No sound. No one to hear. Suddenly one of the trees sways a little, its top branches heavy. It sways again and then suddenly it topples over and falls full length on the ground. But it made no noise at all. It was like a feather falling on feathers. But the thought of the tall tree so silent in the darkness was eerie, almost terrifying, and I shivered. Jack’s arm tightened round my shoulder, “Cold?” he asked. I shook my head.

  I knew Swede and Dollie would be wondering where we were, what was taking us so long, but there were things I wanted to talk to Jack about. I had wanted to talk to him for a long time. For months there had been something inside of me, a disturbed, excited feeling as if there was something I should do at once but I was never sure just what it was. I thought Jack would understand. It was such a quick, urgent feeling and yet all very bewildering. I felt that I should learn to dance better; that I should know how to drive a car; that I should read more. It seemed suddenly as if I had never done anything in my life—that everything was still ahead—and I wanted to know if Jack felt some of the same eager restlessness. I wanted to know but I didn’t know how to ask.

  “Jack,” I ventured, “tell me something. Don’t you wish sometimes that you had studied more in school? That you hadn’t wasted so much time?”

  His answer was hesitant. “I don’t know as I’d say that, Angie. I had a pretty good time.”

  He didn’t understand what I meant so I tried again. “But, Jack, don’t you feel sometimes that you should have read more—that you’ve wanted your mind to be bigger so you could understand what goes on? You know what I mean …” He was sitting looking out into the darkness, hardly listening.

  I wanted him to understand so badly, I almost shook him. “Jack, Jack, listen to me. This is important. I got it figured that I could be a smart girl and a smooth girl if I wasn’t scared of so many things—if I didn’t spend so much time wondering why I’m not what I’m not. I could be as smooth as Jane Rady if I stopped thinking about myself, don’t you know that, Jack?

  “You and I could start now to work on ourselves so we would be, maybe, great people when we grow up. I could brush my hair every night and you could read a lot so we would really be something. Do you see what I mean, Jack? Everything can be so wonderful if you work at it….”

  Somehow I still hadn’t said what I wanted to say and the words tripped over each other, trying to sort out the right ones. “It’s just that I feel we are wasting time. I think we are different from Fitz and Margie and Dollie—and even from Swede. Jack, it seems sometimes that I can’t ever do things ‘enough.’ When I eat, everything tastes so good I can’t get all the taste out of it; when I look at something—say, the lake—the waves are so green and the foam so white that it seems I can’t look at it hard enough; there seems to be something there that I can’t get at. And even when I’m with you, I can’t seem to be with you … enough .” That wasn’t quite what I had meant to say and I let the words trail off awkwardly.

  The night was suddenly very quiet except for the wind in the trees and the sound of the crickets singing—a pulsing chant that hung low to the ground. It was a pregnant, breathing silence and the whole field was throbbing with the still mystery of shadows and moonlight. I realized then that Jack hadn’t been listening to me at all. He was watching me and his hand was on mine and his face was very serious in the dim light. His hand was on mine and then I felt the light touch on my wrist that sent a vague stirring through me and then his fingers were warm on my arm. The night seemed to be waiting, too still. “Jack,” I whispered. “Jack, whatever is the matter with you!”

  His voice was low, almost husky. “You know darn well what’s the matter,” he said.

  But I didn’t. I really didn’t, and in a few moments I took his hand and we crossed back over the field to the quiet car.

  After a while I tried not to count the days. Each night when I went to bed I pretended that I was just going to bed and nothing more; that it didn’t mean marking off another day. I tried not to let myself think, “This is Friday and after this weekend we will have three more and that will be all.” I fixed my dreams so carefully that I woke each morning almost believing that this was the beginning of the summer and not the end.

  But even if it was only August there were already signs of summer’s dying everywhere. The poppies in the garden that had been tousled pink blossoms only a few weeks before were now full-blown and hung heavy with busting seed pods, scattering the seed like little black bugs to the earth. The corn leaves dried in the sunlight and rustled with wind, while the fine, silken hair that hung from the ears shriveled, tobacco-brown. And I knew by the tomatoes that summer was ending. The vines sprawled luxuriantly over the earth still, but the runt tomatoes ripened before they were full-grown, not trusting the sun to shine many weeks longer. Small, white-cocooned webs of spider eggs appeared on the undersides of the clapboards of the house. There was a new ripe lushness about everything; not a fresh, bright greenness as in early summer but a full, heavy maturity that made everything look overripe and basking in the sun.

  Jack noticed the change, too, and drove me out to look at the lake one afternoon. Dog days had come and the lake was thick with sea grass, rolling toward us in full, lazy, green swells. Water birds, with white arcs of wings, swooped low, reveling in the warmth of the air. It was almost impossible to feel sad. There was too much hidden excitement in the weather itself.

  And something had changed in me too. What in the beginning had been a quick, breathless thrill was now a warm, beating gratitude that bordered on contentment. A strange, bewildering contentment. My feelings toward Jack were different now, fuller, richer. I was no longer afraid to look into his eyes or to touch his hand when I talked to him. I felt much older than I had in June and just being with him made my lips feel softer, smoother.

  One night we went to the Fond du Lac County Fair—Fitz, Margie, Jack, and I. The fair is an annual county event and stirs our town for days. Weeks before, black and white banners had been hung low over Main Street, announcing the coming horse races and stock show, and little boys stuck handbills on front porches, printed with splashy ads for the carnival features and sideshows. All the rest of the year the buildings a
t the fairgrounds stood drab and empty, but for the week of the fair they were sprayed with whitewash and little red and blue flags shot up along the roofs and around the doorways. For several days before, the rutted roads that led from the main highway into the fairgrounds were lined with truckloads of vegetables and noisy livestock, and farmers led in their prize horses, the tails braided stumpy with ribbon and the manes shiny. The whole fairgrounds reeked with an earthy, animal smell.

  We went to the fair the third night after its opening and it was as crowded as a dance floor with people bumping and jostling, shoving along. Fitz and Margie were waiting for us just inside the gates. It was still early so we decided to leave the Ferris wheel till later and walk by the sideshow tents, looking at the gaudy-colored posters and watching the barkers and the come-on girls first. We saw people craning their necks in front of the Hawaiian tent show and we stopped too. It was advertised as the largest show on the grounds and the barker wore a bright-red shirt and a flower lei twisted around his neck. There was a bare wooden stage with two hairy-stemmed palm trees on each end and four girls in the center, swaying gently, disinterestedly. Fitz whistled loudly between his teeth and Margie nudged him in the ribs, giggling and whispering. Other people crowded around us, shoving and pushing until we four stood almost at the edge of the platform. The barker shouted and pounded on the ticket box till the crowd grew larger, pressing in a gaping semicircle all around the tent, while the four girls waited, talking among themselves and staring down at the faces staring up at them. When the crowd got large enough one of them brought a ukelele from the tent, plunking at it tunelessly, singing as she played while the others twisted and swayed in a loose-hipped hula, coarse grass skirts swishing noisily as they moved. They all wore flat tennis shoes and no stockings and their legs were red with welts of mosquito bites.