When I asked what books he read to them he said, “Oh, love stories. Sad love stories so that they would cry while they rolled the cigars, and the tears would wet the leaf, and the men who later smoked them would wonder why their thoughts suddenly became full of love and sadness. But cigars cannot do that to a man today because they are made by machines, and you cannot read a book to a machine.”
And he read them Don Quixote. He said, “That was my choice, because too much love makes people soft in the head, and even pretty girls in a cigar factory should know about Don Quixote.” And then he said to me, “Would you like me to read about him to you? I have the book in English as well as Spanish,” and the way he said it I knew he would give anything to read it to me, so I let him. It was the longest book in the world, but every day he read some of it to me down by the cove, and I liked parts of it very much.
That was what we were doing when Suzie Rios came running along the beach to the cove, wearing one of Hilaria’s old dresses as usual that was too big for her, her hair down, and altogether a mess like the rest of the Rios kids. It wasn’t their fault because Hilaria was like that herself, so sloppy, and Felix always went around smelling from dead turtles after working at the Turtle Crawl on Key West, and the only thing they knew how to do was have babies all over the place and not bother about them. They were the loveliest babies, too, when they were babies. They were like little dolls that you could play with and feed and take care of all day long. Then all of a sudden they grew up and were like Suzie. And once when I was talking to Suzie I suddenly thought that in a little while she’d marry somebody like Felix and be just like Hilaria herself, and that hurt. I didn’t tell her about it but it did, and after that I didn’t keep chasing her away when she bothered me because it wouldn’t be for very long anyhow.
Even if Suzie was a pest she was nicer than a lot of the Cubanos over in high school. Especially Marilyn Olivas with that stinking white dress every day because she must have had a hundred of them, and making so much of it because her father was a lawyer and talked to President Truman when he was down here, and always full of her precious José Marti so she could make speeches about him in school assembly, and hating me because her brother kept following me around as if I wanted him to, and the rest of them for that matter. And using their hands all over me in the hall if nobody was watching and I let them get close enough without knowing it.
Suzie wasn’t like Marilyn Olivas at all. She was about as old as I was, but so small and skinny, and wearing Hilaria’s old dresses made it look even worse. And she was full of crazy ideas. She wanted to have long black hair and blue eyes the way I did, so she let her hair grow very long and that was all right. But then one night she rubbed some kind of blue medicine into her eyes to change their color from brown, and Felix had to take her in his boat to Monroe General Hospital with her screaming and crying all the way so that they could fix her up. And she was the one told me that if you drank a lot of water and did you know what while you were swimming, the jellyfish wouldn’t sting you. I got into trouble on account of that because Lettie caught me drinking so much water with the cistern nearly empty, and she made me take all the empty cans she could find across to Key West in the outboard and fill them up, and they weighed a ton apiece carrying them along the dock to the house when I got back and scraped the skin off my hands. And the next time I tried it while I was swimming it didn’t work anyhow.
That’s how Suzie was, but she knew about Jimmy, so I could tell her about him every time I saw him. She thought he was wonderful, too, but she was in love with a pilot from Aerovias Q. She had his picture from a Cuban magazine, but it was in my scrapbook, because if she put it up in her house the other kids would make her feel bad about it. She and Sebastiano were the only ones who knew where my box with the scrapbook and movie magazines were hidden in the cove. Sometimes when Suzie thought no one else was around she would take it out and open the scrapbook to the picture of her pilot and carry on about it. I knew that, because Sebastiano had once seen her from his shack, and it worried him so much he wanted me to talk to her about it. He wouldn’t tell me exactly what she had been doing, but he said it was something nice girls should never do, so I knew. It showed how crazy she was over that pilot, too. I never did that kind of thing, no matter how much I wanted to, unless I was in bed and knew Cole and Lettie were sleeping, or sometimes when I was out on the Gulf in the outboard and couldn’t see any other boats around.
But Suzie was very excitable, crying or laughing or carrying on about the least things, and that’s why I didn’t think anything of it at first when she came running up while Sebastiano was reading to me, and flopped down on the sand next to me, crying and laughing all together and beating the sand with her fists.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “Will you stop being crazy and tell me what’s the matter?” not really caring very much, and that was when she cried over and over again, “He’s dead! He’s dead! Jimmy is dead!”
Everything stopped working in me. I was so cold all of a sudden that my whole skin was gooseflesh. I knew she would never lie about anything like that; she must be telling the truth. All I wanted to do then was cry, but I wouldn’t let myself. I sat there holding my movie magazine and watching Suzie, knowing I would be ashamed to look the way she did. She was rolling around in the sand screaming, and now and then she would grab sand and pour it over her head and tear at her hair, so you could see pieces of it come out in her hands. She was doing just what Hilaria did when the littlest Rios kid ate bad mackerel and died, and we all went to the cemetery. I hated Hilaria for being like that at the cemetery, and I hated Suzie now the same way. And she didn’t even love Jimmy the way I did.
Sebastiano came up and bent down over Suzie. He tried to take hold of her but she kept pulling away and screaming even louder until he yelled, “Stop that, you little fool! Is this a way to behave?”
She stopped screaming and just lay there shaking all over with Sebastiano patting her back, and then he said to her, “Now tell it to me so I can understand. Who died? Is it someone I know?”
“It’s Jimmy,” Suzie told him. “Barbara-Jean’s Jimmy. Jimmy Dean in the movies, and it was on the radio because Cole fixed the generator and I heard it.” She looked at me with her face all smeared with tears and sand like a clown. “It was in an auto accident,” she said. “He was driving fast and there was a wreck. What are you going to do, Barbara-Jean?”
Sebastiano got very angry. “She is going to do nothing,” he said. “She is not a fool like you, disgusting imbecile that you are. One can love a young man from the movies, but one does not cry over his death. He was not real, he was a shadow. And Barbara-Jean is so beautiful there will be many real young men eager to have her care for them. She will cry for those, not for shadows!”
I listened to him, and I couldn’t believe he was saying it. All the times we had talked together he had never really understood about Jimmy and me. I got up and took a handful of sand and threw it right into his face so that he had to back away and put his hands up over his eyes. And I knew I was screaming even louder than Suzie and I didn’t care.
“You liar!” I screamed. “You old liar! You don’t know anything!”
And ran down the beach to the house, leaving my box with the scrapbook and magazines in it for those two to take care of, because that’s all they were good for anyhow.
THREE
I went across the dunes and down through the marsh grass and Spanish bayonet, the grass whipping my legs so hard that it hurt. All I knew was that I had to get over to Key West where they would have the newspapers and I could read about it, but I had already been to school that day and brought Lettie’s groceries on the way back, so Cole would never let me use the outboard again because of what the gas cost. Just the same I had to go see the newspapers for myself and get some movie magazines before they stopped writing about Jimmy in them.
When I was in the palm grove I could see Lettie sitting on the back steps of the house peeling shr
imp, and I ducked around to the front. From the porch I saw that the chairs in the restaurant were standing on the tables ready for me to mop up the floor, but Cole was sitting at a table same as always playing solitaire with his one hand and with a couple of bottles of beer in front of him. That meant I couldn’t get any money out of the cash drawer or a couple of packs of cigarettes to sell to Yeager in Key West for a dime apiece, but that didn’t bother me too much because I knew I could make do without money. And it would even up anyhow, because Cole and Lettie would have to make do without me the rest of the day, no matter how much hell they raised about it.
Of all the things I hated on Mooney’s Key I hated the restaurant most. For the money Cole made out of it, he could have closed it up long ago. The only people we ever got were the ones the Doyle brothers brought in their charter boats, or Al Beecham in his boat because Cole gave them half what he made on anybody they brought. Or sometimes people Felix talked to when they came down to the Turtle Crawl and he told them about us. Or now and then a party boat out of Marathon when some stupid tourist got real seasick coming through Hawk Channel and they had to make a landing, and the ones that weren’t sick would eat something and drink beer.
It was always tourists and always in shorts like a girl, with their hairy knees showing and their faces peeling from the sun. And their women, always stringy and mean, doing everybody a big favor by being alive. Like the one said to me, “I hope you don’t mind my husband staring at you, dear, but he has a terrible weakness for pretty children,” so that the old fool with her got his temper up and didn’t even leave me a tip.
But they were all old fools, almost unscrewing their heads while they watched me walking around, and the spit practically dripping out of their mouths. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Lettie had to be in the kitchen, and Cole wasn’t any use except to pour beer and take their money, so I had to be there all the time, running around and doing all the work. Even if I didn’t do all the work Cole liked me to be there. He knew just as well as I did why some of the tourists were regulars as long as they stayed over in Key West, coming out to Mooney’s Key again and again, and it was all right with him. But he was out of luck now until I got my newspapers and magazines and had a chance to be by myself for a while.
So I got into the outboard and cast off, waiting until the boat had drifted a long way from the dock before I snapped the cord and got the motor going. It took two or three pulls before it turned over, and as soon as it did, Cole came running out on the porch waving his fist at me and yelling to come back. I didn’t listen to him. I swung the boat around and powered it as fast as I could across the open water because even at full speed it took twenty minutes to get to Key West. I cut a straight line across to Fort Taylor and almost ran into the bow of one of those stinking submarines coming out of the base and tied up at the fishing docks where everybody knew the boat and wouldn’t bother it.
When I walked down Trumbo Road it was the same as always. The tourists just looked after me, but the Conchs hanging around started that singing—“Bump-tiddy-bump. Bump-tiddy-bump”—speeding it up if I walked faster and slowing it down when I slowed down, so that no matter how I walked it looked like I was marching to their singing. Before Jimmy died I didn’t mind that so much. I could feel my rear end wiggling while they sang, and I let it, if that was what they wanted. But now I hated them for it. I stopped and picked up a stone before they knew what I was doing and threw it at them, hoping I would hit someone in the head and kill him. But I didn’t. They ducked away from the stone and started laughing and one of them yelled, “Hey, Barbara-Jean, does your daddy know you’re out in your shorty shorts?” and then they all started singing that thing again, so I knew it was no use. I just ran down Trumbo as fast as I could, because if they saw I was nearly crying it would have been a great day for them.
Yeager’s was near the post office, a little place not much more of a store than Cole’s restaurant was a restaurant. But Yeager thought he was a lot, always smiling and showing his teeth and making something of it because he was a cracker from up Tallahassee way and not a Conch. And looked like a tourist with his fat belly stuck out, and his face and bald head sweating and red. When I came in I saw that the newspapers were there, not only the Citizen, but one from Miami and a couple from New York, and Jimmy’s name was there on the front pages. But I didn’t touch them, because Yeager didn’t like that. I just stood with my hands behind my back hoping that the man and woman buying camera film would get it over with and get out right away.
Then Yeager looked at me with that big smile and said, “What is it today, Barbara-Jean?” and I said, “I want all these newspapers and a movie magazine.”
“On credit?”
“On credit.”
I waited to see what kind of mood he was in, and he took his time about it. Then he said, “Help yourself, Barbara-Jean. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m done with these folks,” so I knew it was all right. I took the newspapers and the movie magazine I picked out and put them on a stool at the fountain. Then when the people paid for their film and left, Yeager went around to the back of the store where there was a curtain to shut off the room he slept in, and I followed him into the room, which was half-dark and stank from him when the curtain was pulled shut.
I stood there, and he came up behind me and put his arms around me and grabbed my things, his hands rubbing them and squeezing them hard enough to hurt, his breath blowing on my neck all the while, his belly shoved against my back. Everything about him made me sick, but I just closed my eyes and tried to hold my breath. I wanted to make myself think it was Jimmy doing this the same as always, but I couldn’t now because I knew he was dead. Then I felt Yeager pushing even harder against me in back and starting to get horny, his hands moving down and trying to get under the waistband of my shorts. I jabbed my elbow into him and kicked my foot back into his shin at the same time, and he let go.
“Now, don’t be like that, Barbara-Jean,” he said, and he was really pop-eyed and blowing hard, hornier than I ever saw him. “Those newspapers and magazines cost a lot more than this.”
“No, they don’t,” I said. “And I’m getting ice cream, too, the way you hurt me. You hurt me bad.”
“Now, don’t say that. Barbara-Jean. I was being real gentle. You know I was. And you always get ice cream anyhow, so there’s no call to make any fuss about it.”
He gave me a lot of it, too, more than most times, and I took the dish over to the end stool at the fountain where nobody would bother me and ate it while I read the newspapers. It didn’t taste good because my throat was tight and my stomach knotted up while I was reading about Jimmy, but it was cold and it didn’t cost anything so I ate it all anyhow.
He was in his Porsche Spyder when it happened, and he was so crazy about that car. I was, too, even though I wasn’t sure what it looked like. But I knew how it felt sitting next to him in it going a hundred miles an hour. Sitting there watching how the wind blew his hair all around, and not able to see his eyes because of the dark glasses but knowing how blue they were behind the glasses, and listening to him while he talked to me, so glad we had finally come together and he had me there with him. There wasn’t much he could tell me that I didn’t already know, but whatever he said I would listen to and understand. And from the way I listened to him and looked at him he would know there was finally one girl in the whole world who understood.
It wouldn’t matter if he drove so fast we were killed. Maybe I’d be a little scared when I saw it was going to happen, but he’d put his arm around me trying to save me at the last second, so it would be the both of us together. And everybody reading the papers afterward and knowing I was the one he really loved. We could even be buried together in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was going to be buried. He wasn’t married to anybody else, so it could be me.
His name was James Byron Dean.
He was born in Marion, Indiana, on February eighth in 1931.
He was an only child jus
t the way I was, and Suzie Rios said that was funny because if we had a baby it wouldn’t have any aunts or uncles. But we would know all kinds of famous people and they would love the baby.
He was a Quaker, but not like the ones in the history book who got in trouble wearing hats in front of the judge.
He liked to eat all kinds of sweet things, and so did I.
He knew how to play the guitar, and I knew how to do it a little because I made Sebastiano show me on his.
But most of all he liked to drive a car as fast as he could, the way I liked to run the outboard when Cole wasn’t around.
And then he died in Paso Robles, California, and he was only twenty-four years old.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t with people coming in for cold drinks, and Yeager there. I took the magazine and newspapers under my arm and went down the street to the five-and-dime. Bibi Morales was working at the jewelry counter, so dumb she couldn’t even count the fingers on her hand, and she never minded if I hung around and tried on something as long as I put it back. But this time I didn’t put it back. It was a gold wedding ring but not real gold, and when I got out on the street again I put it on, and as long as I kept my hand closed it fitted all right. Then I walked over to the cemetery near the Maine Memorial and went in.
No matter how much I looked up and down I couldn’t find any stone with Dean written on it. There was every other name you could think of but not that one. Finally I came on one marked James Doane, Beloved Husband, and I saw that would have to do. So I kneeled down next to it and made up a prayer for Jimmy, trying to turn my heart inside out to let him know how I felt, and then I let myself go and cried until I couldn’t cry any more. It didn’t matter that people went by and saw me. They only looked sad about it and kept walking, so it was as good as being alone. And when nobody was there I slipped the wedding ring off my finger and pushed it into the dirt over the grave, shoving it in as far as I could until it was out of sight, and then covered it over. After that, I felt a little better.
The Winter After This Summer Page 20