Windchill Summer

by Norris Church Mailer

  Baby didn’t really believe it—Rocky not being known for his veracity—but even if it was a total lie, the idea of wads of snakes had kept her out of the lake. Like all other snakes, water moccasins always slithered around the edge of Baby’s nightmares. She wondered if snakes would bite a dead person.

  It was a bright summer day, but the dark water seemed to have a red cast to it, as if Carlene’s blood had colored the thousands of acres of water. The sun moved behind a cloud, shadows suddenly got cooler, and the hair on Baby’s arms stood up in goose bumps. John Aldridge’s trotline was usually strung right out there, not a hundred yards from shore, among the stumps where the biggest catfish liked to hide.

  Baby squinted at something out in the water. She thought she could see hair floating out by the trotline. Long, carrot-colored hair. But it was only red nylon cord still attached to the empty Purex bottles that floated the line.

  A set of tire tracks led up to the water, apart from the mass of tracks the police and ambulance must have made. Truck tires. Maybe the very tire tracks of the man who had dumped Carlene like the carcass of a wounded deer.

  Baby turned and looked all around, deep into the woods. The silence was alive with the ambient noise that squirrels and crickets and birds make when they are undisturbed. Normal sounds. Comforting sounds. As if nothing more sinister than rain had fallen into the lake since its birth.

  They say that a murderer always returns to the scene of the crime. But this murderer more than likely ran away, at least to another county, and maybe as far as Oklahoma or Texas or Missouri. Ran far away. Drove all night and drove all morning and is probably still driving. No, he would never come back here. Never again. In fact, Baby told herself, this was the safest place to be.

  Baby saw a flat rock at the edge of the water and kneeled to stack two more on top of it. Then she peeled a clump of damp green moss from under a tree and placed it on top of the rocks, like velvet on a small altar. From her middle finger she removed a fragile ring that Carlene had once admired. It was made from a pink seashell and had elaborate carving.

  “That ring looks like you dove to the bottom of the sea and broke it off of one of those big old seashells, Baby,” Carlene had said. “I can almost hear the ocean waves in it. When I get to California, I’m going to get me one just like it. Maybe wearing a pretty ring would help me stop biting my nails.”

  Baby was sorry she hadn’t given it to her then. But she liked it, too. And how could she know Carlene would be dead so soon? Now the ring lay on the moss.

  “Take it, Carlene. I hope you’re somewhere that’s like a California beach full of pink seashells. I hope you’re happier there than you ever were here.” She flung the ring, rock, and moss into the water and tried to pray, but her thoughts kept flitting away, like hummingbirds.

  She felt sleepy then. The shade was so cool; the moss, so soft. She lay down and slept until the sun went down and the mosquitoes began to bite. Then she went home to eat supper and get ready for work. Somehow she felt at peace. Like maybe Carlene was indeed someplace better.

  6.Cherry

  “There’s going to be a wedding at the church on Saturday. It seems Rayburn Earl Payton told Marcy Oates six years ago that he’d marry her when man walked on the moon.”

  Baby and I were still in the onion room. After two nights, Alfred Lynn had not relented and moved us, but we didn’t care. They were beginning to pack hot peppers, and if anything is worse than peeling onions, it is packing hot peppers. No matter if you wear two pairs of gloves, your hands still burn like fire. And if you forget and brush your hand over your eye—oh, my Lord, forget it. There is no describing the pain.

  Baby threw another onion into the basket. “I don’t know why they’re bothering. They’ve been going together for fifteen years. They must have wore it out long before this.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing. He made a promise, and Marcy is holding him to it. There’s a pool of guys here at the pickle plant betting that Rayburn Earl will back out, but Marcy’s girlfriends have already given her a shower, and they would rip Rayburn Earl’s arm off and beat him to death with the bloody stump if they had to take back the mixers and the chip-and-dip sets and stuff they laid out for.”

  One of the hotdoggers whizzed into the room on his little go-cart with a new flat of onions for us to peel.

  “Whooee!” he said. “Y’all ain’t never goin’ to finish this load if you don’t speed it up.” He slid the flat off right beside us.

  “I’ll trade jobs with you, William Lee, if you think you can do any better.”

  “What? Me do woman’s work? Peeling onions is all y’all are good for. Besides something else, that is.” He dodged the onion I chucked at him, laughed, threw the buggy into reverse, and zoomed out. Boys can be so ignorant it’s not even worth worrying about.

  I tossed my pile of onion peels onto the mound on the floor, split one of the new bags open with my paring knife, and filled the pan I held in my lap.

  “She probably would like to have a baby. Marcy is already thirty-two, but she might still be able to have one. If they hurry.”

  “Well, I hope she gets what she wants. Myself, I can’t picture marrying that stupid Rayburn Earl, or anybody else right now. Not even Bean.” Baby still seemed a little down, but I wasn’t worried about her anymore. She said last night that it was just the shock of the news about Carlene that had gotten to her, but she felt better now.

  “Me neither,” I said, and I meant it. “I want to live a little before I have to settle down with a husband and a squalling baby. Speaking of which, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you. Lucille finally had her baby this afternoon.”

  “Did she? What was it?”

  “A girl. Ten pounds and eight ounces. Fattest little thing you ever saw. Her eyes are just slits. She’s almost as big as Jim Floyd right now.”

  “Did Lucille have a hard time?”

  “I guess so. She was in labor fourteen hours. You won’t believe it, but Mama said that they had just shaved her you-know-what and given her an enema and she was sitting on the porta-potty passing the entire contents of her bowels—which I will try not to think about, given the fact that she had not only eaten two orders of Taco Loco the night before but also three helpings of kraut and weenies—when the whole ladies’ auxiliary from our church trooped in to see how she was progressing and to give her moral support.”

  “I bet that popped their eyes, the old biddies.” Baby threw her peelings onto the floor.

  “You don’t know the half of it. Lucille started cussing at them and throwing toilet paper and everything else she could reach, yelling for them to get out. I bet some of them had never heard of the things she called them.”

  “That is one thing I just don’t understand about the Holiness Church,” Baby said. “What’s this mania they all seem to have to bust in on people when they’re in the hospital? The last thing people need when they’re sick is a bunch of do-gooders standing around staring at them and preachers praying over them, making them feel like they’ve got one foot on the road to glory.”

  “It gives the preachers something to do when they’re not preaching. The Bible says to visit the sick, so it makes the congregation feel like they’re racking up gold stars in their heavenly crowns. And let’s face it—there’s not exactly a whole lot to do around here, so it’s entertainment.”

  “If I ever have to go to the hospital, just make sure none of those Holy Rollers gets near me.” Baby was dead serious.

  “Well, I beg your pardon. Are you talking about me?” I pretended to be offended. We had gone over this ground before.

  “Oh, Cherry, you know you’re not a real Holy Roller. You just have to go to church with them because your daddy makes you. You know I’m not talking about you. You better come if I get sick.”

  “Knock wood.”

  “Knock wood.”

  We knocked on the wooden flat.

  “What did she name her?”

  “Tiffany LaD
awn.”

  “That sounds like something Lucille would pick. It’s a pink-sounding name. I can just see all the pink ruffledy outfits she’ll make the poor little fat thing wear. Lucille the second.”

  Lucille had always had rather excessive taste, to say the least. Probably thanks to G. Dub, who once mentioned the resemblance and gave her a swelled head. Jayne Mansfield was Lucille’s hero, and she had seen every movie Jayne had ever made four or five times and read everything in Photoplaythey had ever printed about her and her weight-lifter husband and their gang of kids and her heart-shaped swimming pool. After Jayne unfortunately had her head lopped off a year or two ago when her driver fell asleep and plowed the car under a Mack truck, Lucille went to bed for three days. But the fire in her heart burned on. Pink had been Jayne’s favorite color, and the tighter, lower, and pinker the dress, the better Lucille liked it. I knew for a fact that before it was even born, all the outfits she bought for the baby were pink. It was just a miracle that Tiffany LaDawn had not been a boy. He would have had to wear them anyhow. Lucille and Jim Floyd’s trailer was all done up in pink, too. It was like walking into a bottle of Pepto-Bismol when you went in over there.

  —

  “I’m going to get a breath of air. It’s nearly time for break anyhow.”

  I shuffled through the onion peelings to the door that led out to the back lot and breathed in the night air. The moon was still full and lit up the yard. As hard as I looked, I couldn’t see any sign of the astronauts.

  Off to the left, a night-watcher lamp shone on a railroad siding that ran behind the pickle vats. A bunch of boys were shoveling out a boxcar load of salt into big containers. One of the boys, I didn’t recognize. He was blond, with long hair pulled back into a ponytail, and he had on faded-out blue jeans and a white undershirt—the ribbed, sleeveless kind—that showed off his muscles. He was built a little like G. Dub but more slender. Not delicate, though. He was shoveling as fast and hard as the rest of them. He must have felt me looking at him, because he stopped for a minute and looked right at where I was standing. You know that shock of electricity you get when you slide across the car seat and touch the door handle on a cold winter day? I’m not making it up; I felt one when he looked up at me.

  The whistle blew for break. Baby put down her knife and got up.

  “Come on, Cherry. Let’s go down to the break room.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Cherry? What are you looking at? Let’s go. We only have fifteen minutes.”

  The boy disappeared into the boxcar, then came back out putting on a blue chambray shirt. He flipped his ponytail out from under the collar and started to button it as he jumped down to the ground.

  I followed Baby to the break room, off the main floor. It was painted sea-foam green, lit by fluorescent lights, and had four or five machines full of sandwiches, sweet rolls, candy, Coke, and coffee. The chairs were the tan-metal folding kind, with plastic seats; nearly all of them had cigarette-melt marks and silver tape holding the splits together.

  Most of the tables were filled by the year-round workers, who had long ago staked out their territory. Lord help you if you sat in somebody’s regular seat. Baby and I got honey buns and Cokes, pulled off our hair nets, and shook out our hair.

  Just as we sat down, the blond boy walked in with a couple of salt-encrusted guys I knew. He looked around the room like he was trying to spot somebody. I glanced away before he saw me staring and bit into my honey bun. Baby was saying something, but I’m not sure what it was. She waved her hand in front of my face, like you would to see if somebody was blind.

  “Cherry? Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?”

  “Huh? What did you say?”

  The boy walked over to our table and stood. In his hands were pink coconut Sno-balls.

  “Is this seat taken?”

  He had blue eyes. No—aquamarine. And ridiculously long eyelashes that looked like he had squeezed them in an eyelash curler. They were a shade darker than his hair. Golden. Honey. Wheat. I would have killed for those eyelashes. I wondered for a minute if my white eyelash roots were showing under the Dark Eyes color job.

  “No, not at all. Take a load off.” Baby had caught on by now.

  He pulled out the chair, turned it around, threw his leg over the back, and sat down. Right across the table from me. I tried to size him up. He was maybe as tall as I am. Maybe not. It didn’t really matter.

  “Thanks. I’m Tripp Barlow.” He put down his Sno-balls and stuck out his hand. We shook it—Baby first, then me. It was hard and gritty from the salt, and warm. I could feel my face flush with hot blood.

  Tripp Barlow. That couldn’t be his real name.

  “I’m Baby Moreno,” Baby said after a moment when I didn’t say anything. “This is Cherry Marshall. We peel onions.”

  “Yes, I can tell. I shovel salt.” He was serious, but his eyes seemed to be laughing. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Baby, however, was never at a loss for words.

  “Are you new here? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

  “Yeah. I just moved here to go to DuVall in the fall. I’ll be a senior. Thought I’d get here early and make a little pocket money. I’m from California. San Francisco.” His voice was like warm syrup poured over sand. He had an accent that could only be from California. You could hear the surf in it.

  “Oh wow! California! That’s so great!” Baby’s voice squeaked. “We’re seniors at DuVall, too. What’s your major?”

  “Art.”

  “Oh my gosh. You’re kidding. So is ours!” Baby’s voice went up two octaves. She was being just a little too effervescent, I thought.

  I knew it had to be art. Nobody around here had hair that long unless they were in the art department. In fact, they were still trying to kick kids out of high school if they didn’t cut their hair. I got so mad at that. Like, if you don’t have short hair you don’t deserve an education. Next they could say that if you don’t pluck your eyebrows or shave your legs you will be expelled. It’s nobody’s business but yours how you wear your hair. Tripp’s hair was nearly down to his shoulders. I guess they were more ahead of the trends in California than we were in Arkansas. Big surprise.

  I could picture him on a surfboard with that hair hanging loose in golden waves. Jesus Christ was the only thing I could compare it to. As soon as the thought entered my mind, I said a little prayer asking Him to forgive me for thinking anybody looked like Him. It’s so hard to keep bad thoughts out of your head. The Devil is always putting them in there whether you like it or not. But Tripp did look, at least, like an angel might.

  There were so many things I wanted to ask him. Like, for starters, why did he pick little old DuVall University to go to if he was from a great big city like San Francisco? Why didn’t he go to Berkeley? That was the hottest school in America to be at right now. But for some reason the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I just kept staring at those clear aquamarines. Baby was shaking my arm.

  “Cherry, the whistle blew. We have to get back to work. Come on!”

  I stood up and looked at Tripp with a goofy grin on my face. “See you.”

  “So it talks. See you later.” He laughed and waved and made his way back out to the salt car. Baby and I went back to the onion room.

  “You’ve got it bad, Cherry. I’ve never seen you like this. Snap out of it!”

  “What? He’s cute, that’s all. I just met him, for Pete’s sake!”

  “You just remember that ones who look like him are bad news. Don’t do it, girl. Run now, while you still can. Save yourself.”

  Baby can be so melodramatic sometimes. But she was right. I never could fool Baby. I just couldn’t admit it out loud yet.

  “Oh, the voice of experience. You’ve been with the same guy for four years, and he’s crazy about you. But I hear you. Anyhow, he probably won’t even ask me out. I didn’t say three words to him. But just in case he does, I promise not to fall for him. Okay? Satisfied?”

&nb
sp; “No, I can’t believe you. I’m on record: I warned you.”

  “Great. I wrote it down. You’re off the hook in case he breaks my heart.”

  I moved my chair closer to the door so I could watch the boys shovel salt while I peeled. The rest of the night went really fast.

  7.Baby

  Baby was not as charmed by Tripp Barlow as Cherry obviously was, in spite of her having been so friendly to him at the pickle plant. When she thought about it later, she decided that something about him had made her nervous, made her talk too much. Maybe it was because he was so pretty—you couldn’t call it handsome. Men that good-looking were usually more in love with themselves than they would ever be with any woman, and it was better not to get started with them in the first place.

  Not that handsome men weren’t attracted to her. Most men were attracted to Baby, but she wasn’t interested in many of them, and she went into senior year of high school with her virginity intact. Then she started going out with Bean Boggs. Bean was small, like she was. He couldn’t have been more than five-foot-three. He was nicely built but slight; dark, with deep brown eyes. He acted like he thought Baby’s little feet didn’t quite touch earth. It seemed that he couldn’t believe his good luck that she wanted him—a little guy who the in-crowd didn’t even know existed.

  That, in fact, may have been a big part of why Baby was attracted to Bean. She and Cherry went to parties and ran with the in-crowd, but Baby never really felt part of it. If Cherry knew how she felt, she would say it was all in Baby’s head, but deep down inside, Baby believed the rest of them secretly thought they were better than she was.

  She never felt that way with Bean. He was at the bottom of the social totem pole, because he lived on the Ridge—back up on the wild side of the mountain, where the shacks scattered through the woods had outhouses and dilapidated old cars jacked up on concrete blocks in their front yards. The kids who lived up there had rusty elbows and rode the bus to school. They smelled like wood smoke and bacon fat and B.O.