“Maybe just come out to the boat then. I bet you wanna come for a ride, huh, Butch?” Darrel continued.
“Oh, yeah!” Butch exclaimed happily.
“Perfect. You kids go for a ride, and when you come back, we’ll have lunch all ready,” Gwen commanded.
Sheila could barely think as she followed Darrel and Butch down to the water in her cutoffs and collared, cream-colored blouse with her turquoise blue swimsuit hidden underneath. Butch, of course, jumped right in the lake and swam up to the boat. Sheila, however, waited at the shore, hesitant.
“What are you waiting for?” Darrel asked.
“I told you I don’t want to get wet.”
Darrel smiled a knowing smile and started toward her. She backed up a step, unsure of his motives. But when he reached her, he just bent down and stuck his head through her legs, hoisting her onto his shoulders. She quickly gripped his head for fear of toppling over with him but didn’t scream. Steadily he waded through the water over to the boat.
“Tom, this is Sheila. Sheila, Tom.”
“Charmed,” Sheila managed shakily to the handsome, sandy-haired captain of the vessel.
Tom gave her his hand, and she managed to step into the boat right off of Darrel’s shoulders, her heart beating like a hummingbird’s. Then Darrel hoisted himself over the side and sat down near the cooler, where beers were being kept cold. He popped one of the cans open and offered it to Sheila. “Beer?” For whatever reason, she said yes and extended her hand to take it, though she’d never even sipped a beer before.
As the boat took off, Butch laid down on his belly in the front, where he could get the first blast of spray as the vessel hit the open water. Sheila held her beer tightly as though it were her sanity and kept her eyes locked firmly on Darrel. When he noticed her stare, he smiled and clinked his beer can against hers. When he took a sip, she did the same. Then he started talking to Tom, but Sheila could hear nothing, her mind lost in the pounding of blood in her ears and the cold bitter of alcohol on her tongue.
The day was about as long as a late summer day could be, and Sheila was exhausted as much by her time out on the unstable water in the boat as by the anxiousness she felt with every movement Darrel made when they were back on the shore.
As dusk settled into darkness, Willie lit propane lanterns and a bonfire while everyone continued to laugh and listen to stories, mostly told by Darrel, who was chock-full of tales from Vietnam about half-naked “ching-chong women” and jungle snipers. At one point, Sheila needed to use the bathroom, and Darrel offered to take her to the facility a few hundred yards off in the dark—a small, cinderblock building that had been recently built, like many others around the Lake Thunderbird grounds during its “modernization.” A couple steps into their journey, Darrel handed the softly hissing lantern in his hand to Sheila so he could light a cigarette.
“Why do you look at me all scared and jumpy-like?” Darrel took back the lantern, the cigarette in his mouth bobbing up and down, faintly illuminating his face with its sizzle of spark red.
Sheila felt the warmth of his fingers still lingering on her hand, which had touched hers in the lantern exchange.
“I know you’re a talkative one. I see whole worlds of conversation dartin’ around in that head of yours.”
They walked a few more steps in silence, Sheila looking back over her shoulder as if to make sure her family was still there, only a cry away if she needed them.
“So, you have a fun time at that dance of yours last night?” Darrel asked, his stare trained off into the distance.
Sheila looked up at him, unsure of what to say. Then, when he looked back at her, she looked away again.
“You looked real pretty in that dress you wore.”
No response.
“You really like that Joe you went with?”
Still nothing.
“Guess you don’t want to talk to me.”
Sheila said nothing, the restroom—her refuge—coming up fast. When they reached it, she walked inside the small, single-toilet facility without hesitation. If she hadn’t had to go so badly, Sheila suspected she might not have been able to relieve herself at all with Darrel standing right outside. But then, as if he knew she might have trouble, he began to sing loudly, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me… I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I’m free… ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved… How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed…”
When Sheila stepped around the corner into the night again, Darrel greeted her with a broad smile, “I like ol’ hymns. They kept me warm back in Nam.”
Then Darrel took the lantern in one hand and grabbed her up in the other. He planted a kiss on her lips. It was harsh, deep. His tongue slipped inside her mouth, tasting like warm milk. His stubble scraped her soft cheeks, and she struggled, but not to get away exactly. His body felt certain when held up against her tumultuous existence. She felt his hard prick poking at her through his flimsy shorts and liked that she could have such power over a man—over him—this way, and though she didn’t understand it, she didn’t want to let it go either. Almost as soon as it had started, however, Darrel pulled away and started walking slowly back toward the picnic area. But Sheila stood still, her body swimming with chemicals never before released inside of her.
“Did you… What did you…?” Sheila stumbled with her words.
“What?”
“I feel…”
“Yeah?”
“I feel…” Suddenly she started to cry.
“Hey. Hey. What are you crying for?” Darrel quickly started back toward her, fear on his face for the first time all day. She let him touch her cheek tenderly, wiping away one of the stray tears with his calloused hands. “Come on now. We gotta get back.”
Sheila nodded. He took her hand in his, and they began to walk back toward the picnic area, where laughter erupted from some unknown joke just being told by Willie. Darrel’s hand enveloping Sheila’s felt strong and knowing, sending a courage through her that calmed her just as surely as his kiss had upset everything she had known up to that point. She looked up at him, his eyes confidently staring into the future. Here was a man, Darrel McAllister, who had made her feel something she’d never felt before, and she wouldn’t be able to rest again until she possessed him entirely, caged that confidence inside him for herself, until she claimed his courage and strength and sure-footedness for herself, until she had taken in all of the drug of him that he could give her.
As they approached their companions, Willie called out. “Well, did you fall in?” Sheila huffed and squeezed Darrel’s hand tighter. But he let her hand go and walked over to the picnic table, casually grabbing a beer from the cooler. Then he took a seat in one of the folding picnic chairs and popped the top on the beer like nothing had ever happened. Conversation resumed, the fireflies blinked on and off in the distance, and the frogs chirped out their evening orchestration down by the lake’s edge. But Sheila stood as if a ghost in the midst of it, watching all, watching Darrel—the only thing in life she would ever want again.
Sheila’s deliberate avoidance of Peyton at school over the next few weeks confounded him. And though he tried to talk to her multiple times about what he might have done so wrong the night of the dance to deserve her cold shoulder, she didn’t care to discuss it, which is exactly what she told him over and over. Kit even came to Sheila at one point and told her that Peyton was miserable and couldn’t they work things out? Sheila just rolled her eyes at the annoyance. She had more important things to do, like getting home and seeing if Darrel had sent her a letter. With his service in Nam complete, Darrel had moved to St. Louis to work at the Chrysler factory during the day and take classes at George Washington University at night to finish up his degree in business and agriculture. He was good about writing at least a letter or two a week. And Willie and Gwen didn’t mind the correspondence and the implied in
terest. They liked Darrel well enough. What wasn’t to like?
On her seventeenth birthday, only a few months after that fateful Lake Thunderbird kiss, Darrel drove down to visit and brought Sheila a bouquet of gerbera daisies, dressing in a nice collared shirt and slacks. He took her out to dinner and a movie. It was Sheila’s first date, and it was wonderful. In their seats at the theater, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her tight. The movie was Vanishing Point, which he wanted to see, and afterward they stopped on a quiet road not far from the Barnetts’ neighborhood, where they made out. It was aggressive and intense, but Sheila wanted it. She wanted to overwhelm Darrel in her attempt to claim him, and as far as she could tell, she was doing a perfect job.
In May, Sheila was almost finished with her junior year, and Darrel came down for a week to see her again, his classes on break. He took her to the high school prom, where they danced to “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by Roberta Flack. It was the most romantic moment up to that point in Sheila’s life. It was a dream come true—her favorite song, Darrel in his army uniform, every girl in school watching them with jealous eyes—and she was only a junior!
Tom, who’d captained the boat at Lake Thunderbird the first time, caught up with Sheila and Darrel again at Lake Thunderbird for a double date with a girlfriend of his own. Meg was older than Sheila and laughed at everything Sheila did as though Sheila was the funniest girl she’d ever met. Of course, this laughter only made Sheila feel self-conscious and ensured that when Meg made some move at the bow of the boat—groped Tom, kissed him, drank more than one beer—Sheila felt compelled to do the same. In no time at all, everyone was drunk, and both couples slipped under blankets at their separate ends of the vessel so they could run their hands all over one another and make out. It felt incredible to Sheila, the cool breeze off the lake, the warm sun baring down, the dip and rise of the boat on the water as Darrel’s hands mapped out her breasts, her ass, in between her legs. She felt him up, too. He was warm and thick, wet like her. And as his tongue dug deep into her mouth, she gave herself to him completely. It hurt. It was terrifying. But he kissed her, told her he loved her. And only later, as they were driving home, did Sheila realize that though she had been attempting to possess him, Darrel was actually possessing her.
Sheila cried when Darrel headed back up to St. Louis, but he promised to write and call when he could. This was her only consolation. This, and the “I love you’s” he kept breathing into her ears. And for the next couple weeks, the letters started back up with a vengeance, full of declarations and hopes for their future, always starting with “Hey Funny Girl” because that’s what he called her, being that she loved Barbara Streisand so much. And they always ended with, “Love You, D.” Every Sunday, he promised to call, and for a while, he did. Then the letters abruptly stopped. It was like a spigot of life support for Sheila was turned off. And suddenly she was suffocating in her bed, in her bedroom, in her house, in Oklahoma, in the world. She wrote letter after letter to Darrel, imploring him to explain what had happened. But he didn’t respond. Gwen talked to Faye, who talked to Ruby, who talked to Darrel, but the diagnosis was terminal.
“You’ll meet somebody else,” Gwen told Sheila, stroking her hair while Sheila laid on her bed with tears streaming down her face.
“There’ll never be anyone like Darrel,” Sheila sobbed back.
Honestly, Gwen didn’t know what to do about the situation Sheila was going through with Darrel. She’d never encountered Willie stepping away from her, going for some other—a greener pasture—and she had certainly never done such a thing. Growing up a farmer’s daughter on the Oklahoma prairie, Gwen made do without all the choices Sheila now had. Gwen had learned to be content with what her world had to offer her, whether it was the type of soap she used to clean her face or the man she married. Happiness for her had come from simplicity, which she now clung to, even as the world offered so many more options that, in her opinion, weren’t necessarily better, just different. And in a way, understanding this had freed Gwen and Willie to live more fully and love one another unencumbered. But nowadays lovers seemed to simply be biding their time together, living for the next possibility to happen by, and as a result, people were getting divorced, having affairs, fighting with their husbands and wives, as though love were the last thing on their minds when they first kissed, first held hands, first had sex. Commitment was only a means to an end, and when the end was reached, so too was the commitment. Gwen tried to share this with Sheila, but what did it matter? Sheila wasn’t the one who left.
Willie also tried, in the face of the present situation, to talk to Sheila about the way a real man behaved, with integrity and devotion to duty, but she didn’t want to hear it. She looked at him as though he were an alien who spoke in a foreign tongue she would never comprehend. So he let her be, thinking that eventually she would heal, she would learn, and she would be stronger as a result.
After a while, Sheila had enough of writing Darrel letters with perfume exclamations and only ever getting “Sorry, he’s not available” from the operator when she called. She lay in bed at night, went to school during the day, ate her food, did her chores, and met up with her friends while the ticker tape that asked what she had done wrong to cause Darrel to leave her played over and over in her head. Did he think she was a slut now that she’d given herself to him? Had she become one of those girls in the locker room she’d so despised? Was it her hair? She wasn’t wearing her curls as tightly now as when she and Darrel first met. Was she just too young? Maybe she wasn’t smart enough. If only she would have asked him more questions, laughed at his jokes a little harder, doted on him more fully. Maybe she should have had more sex with him. Maybe she was too stiff when they had sex. Maybe if she’d had more experience. Maybe it was the last time she saw him, when she’d sung along to the radio in the car. Maybe she had such a horrible voice she’d turned him off completely. On and on Sheila listened to the questions her mind asked her, trying to remedy her current situation, trying to sort things out, trying to fill the void that in her current state had left her hopeless, left her feeling lonely, left her uncertain of everything.
Sheila had always dreamed of being a senior—one of those girls who was at the top of the social hierarchy of high school. But when that moment finally arrived, she could hardly feel the rush she had been waiting for. She was lost in the fog that had enshrouded her when Darrel left, and it wouldn’t lift. Then she and Peyton began to talk around the halls of South East High once again. By the end of August, they were seen holding hands and kissing. And by the end of September, they were full-on sweethearts, as though nothing had ever come between them.
“I don’t ever want to stop kissin’ you,” Peyton said when he pulled his lips away from Sheila’s, leaving his hand on her breast, covering half the loop of the giant “P” painted there. For Halloween, they had dressed as two black-eyed peas, each of them sporting a black eye while wearing T-shirts that had the letter “P” on the front.
“Who’s telling you to stop?” Sheila cooed.
They were in Peyton’s parents’ Cadillac, which the Dukes had promised to send with him to OSU, where he’d be playing football next fall.
“I’m serious, baby. You’re just about the end-all, be-all,” he said.
“Go on.”
“I will if you want me to. What do you want me to talk about, your eyes or your smile? I know. I could talk about your…”
“What?” Sheila asked, intrigued.
“Well, your breasts.” And he massaged her chest softly, staring carefully into her eyes. They were supposed to be on their way home from a haunted house, but had left the festivities early and stopped midway between the high school and the Barnetts’ place to make out behind an old, abandoned feed store.
“You ain’t like any of the other girls around school.”
“How so?”
“You’ve got a brain. You’re thinkin’. Every time I see you, there�
�s something goin’ on in that head of yours, and all I want is to find out what it is.”
“You want to know what I’m thinkin’?”
“Well, yeah.”
“No way.”
“Come on.”
Sheila thought about it a moment, then sighed. “I’m thinking about how I can make things better than what they are.”
“Ain’t things good for you?”
“My momma and daddy just settle for everything. They don’t ever wanna be more than what they are.”
“What’s wrong with your momma and daddy? They seem happy enough.”
“Maybe so. I ain’t, though. When you’ve seen better, you want better.”
“What’s better?”
“Everything.”
Peyton pursed his lips, trying to digest what Sheila was saying. “All I know is I love you, Sheila Barnett,” Peyton whispered.
“I love you, too, P,” Sheila sighed. She liked Peyton’s sincerity, but she also looked at it as a weakness, like he was not man enough to hold in his feelings, and it kind of turned her off. She tried kissing him again, but once more, he pulled away.
“What if I was to ask you to marry me?” Peyton said.
Sheila wasn’t sure what to think. Sure, the idea of marrying a football star from a wealthy family who was one of the best looking guys in school was attractive on paper, but Peyton was too earnest. She had possessed him—all of him—too easily, and she wanted just what she had told him: more, better, something she couldn’t possess, the man who had possessed her—she wanted Darrel. Still, she smiled sweetly. “How could I say no?”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like a yes,” Peyton pouted.
“Well, it ain’t a no.”
Peyton smiled. “That’s true.” Then he took her hand and kissed it. “I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna ask you with an engagement ring and everything. In the meantime, though… Well, my momma’s gonna kill me for doing this, but…” Peyton slid his class ring off his finger and placed it on Sheila’s engagement ring finger.
Daisies Page 5