Walking Dunes

by Sandra Scofield

  8.

  The last time Hayden Kimbrough called it was early May, and David and Ellis had just won the regional school championship. They had won the West Texas Relays in March, exulting in their home court advantage on the concrete, playing in high gritty wind. They had won the Southwest Invitational in El Paso, too, although none of the Dallas or Houston schools sent teams, diluting the sense of victory over lesser districts. Basin was barely big enough to fit the AAAA category, with few of the advantages of the bigger schools. The team had bought new rackets with money cadged in parking lot car washes. The city had always poured money and enthusiasm into the football teams, which had a wildly fluctuating record, and had ignored everything else except basketball, but this was the first time anybody from Basin High had performed significantly in tennis apart from the Relays. The paper splashed the boys’ photograph across the sports page: WHITTEY-PUCKETT TEAM SWATS LUBBOCK OUT OF REGIONAL TITLE SLOT. At school, guys said, Good going, Puckett. Hang Houston. Girls smiled and said, Great going, y’all.

  It felt good to win. This year, it was more important. If David and Elis could win state, there would be scholarships. Every time he drove by Basin Junior College, he gulped to think of two years there. Two years nowhere.

  David and Ellis had gone out to the country club to play with a group of Kimbrough’s friends. Kimbrough said he was trying to build sponsorship for a county meet at the club; too late for ’58, but he thought ’59 was possible. “Let’s show you off to the fellas,” he told the boys. So they played exhibition sets with Kimbrough and the tennis pro, moving fast to win each one, quicker and more aggressive and more alive than the older men. And of course David and Ellis were a real team, moving like one organism that spring, and, that day, richly confident. They won the match 6–2, 6–4, and Kimbrough split them up to play other combinations. Kimbrough and his daughter played his wife and David. It was a surprisingly vigorous, enjoyable game. The women were evenly matched, and Kimbrough had improved through the morning. David, cut off from Ellis, played a less spectacular, more sociable game. He found himself smiling, even humming. Mrs. Kimbrough and Beth Ann wore fetching outfits with short skirts that swirled around their slim hips as they dipped and ran. They were quite tan. Mrs. Kimbrough wore her hair in a short cap-like style, uncurled, with a stretchy band on her forehead. Her hair rose when she leaped, and fell back perfectly in place. It shone like taffeta in the sun. She had the same clean features as her daughter, and she did not look twenty years older, either. Beth Ann wore her hair pulled straight back in a curvy pony tail. David noticed how long her throat was, and how strong her legs. She probably had her own pool, and swam every day.

  After they played, there was a nice buffet laid out on a long table in the shade of the portico. The table was banked at each end with bowls of cut flowers. Someone handed the boys bottles of Nehi Orange Crush, not what David would have chosen to quench his thirst, but he drank his greedily anyway and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He suppressed a belch, and caught his partner’s look; Ellis, familiar with David’s mighty burps, winked. They set their bottles down on a round glass-topped table and moved toward the end of the buffet to pick up plates. David was starved, and exhilarated to be in this company. Just then Kimbrough came over and somehow seemed to gather them in like children, close to him. He pumped their hands, and gave them hearty pats on the back. He thanked them for coming and promised they would do it again. “It does us good to see our youngsters so healthy and able,” he said. Other men, most of them now showered and dressed in golf clothes or swimming suits with matching shirts, gathered around to say thanks and goodbye and nice job. Good luck at state, they all said, and turned back to their friends. David saw girls and boys he knew from high school, sitting in clusters at tables or on lounge chairs near the pool. None of them seemed to have noticed him, except Beth Ann, who waved a light, fingery goodbye and turned away. David looked around. New people had arrived. The buffet was something else, not to do with the tennis at all. It was not for them. Ellis looked confused. He was dangling a paper napkin from his left hand. David gave him a sign with his eyes, and they left hurriedly.

  In the car they expelled the held-back air, cried “Shee-it!” and then shook hands jovially and mocked their hosts. “Such fine YOUTH!” they laughed. “So HEALTHY!”

  “Did you see that fat guy in a turquoise bathing suit?” Ellis was bent over with laughter.

  David went along with his brave humor. He said, “And how about Sue Hunnicutt’s black bathing suit? I mean, puhl—unge. She sits near me in chemistry. Always dressed to the gills, little silk scarves tucked around her throat. Now I’ll see those big smashed boobies, no matter how she hides them!” He felt hot and anxious, stirred up. He beat his hand against the steering wheel, then backed carefully out of the tidy parking lot. Sounds of chatter and laughter sprayed the air.

  Now here was Kimbrough, calling again, and David’s chest seemed to fill with happiness. He wanted to go to the club again. He had always known that tennis was a gentleman’s game. Although he had started with a three-dollar used racket on a public court, he had often imagined himself in expensive clothes, dangling a cat-gut racket while he waited for his opponent to crawl out of a little black Jaguar. Even as a little kid he had seen himself in better circumstances, playing tennis for fun. For leisure, as people do who have the money to call their fun a word like that.

  But he wanted to set himself up for a less humble exit. “Sure, I can spare a couple of hours,” he told Kimbrough. “I’m going water skiing later.” Actually, the gang would be long gone for Red Bluff by eight in the morning. Sure enough, the kids did come by for him early, and he waved them away sleepily. He said he wasn’t up to it. He often begged off from group events. He skirted the edge of being stand-offish. He knew it, and tried to make up for it with his pass-by friendliness at school. Down the halls he went, raising his hand in a palm-forward, raised salute. Hi, hi, and hi.

  Glee’s protests were aborted by the other kids’ urgency to be under way. “Oh goodie,” Dickie Huber said, hugging Glee and giving her a smacking kiss on the cheek. “Two girls for me, my good luck, huh?” His date looked peeved. David thought to himself that Dickie Huber was a creep who wanted to get under Glee’s skirt; he could hardly bear the minute it took for them to pull away. His last view of Glee was of her glaring angry face as she looked at him through the back window of Buddy’s pink BelAir. They really are her friends, he thought. Why does she like me?

  He raced to shower and dress. He had washed his tennis shorts after Kimbrough’s call, adding extra bleach to make them as white as possible. He wore a white polo shirt with a pale blue collar and ribbing at the armholes, a birthday gift from his mother. He could kiss her for it now. He had scrubbed his tennis shoes, too.

  No women were at the club courts. The players were all men and boys. Sons and fathers, David guessed. He seemed to be the stand-in for Kimbrough’s lack of a son. The other boys were older than David, young men about to go back to college. He heard the schools’ names floating in the air all morning: Baylor, Texas, Yale. Bobby Birdsong, who had been All-State, and nominated for All-American, who might have picked any of a dozen schools if he had played football, was at Dartmouth, for the rowing team. The other guys kidded him. He said he had seen a photograph, and had wanted to leave the prairie for water. Still a team player, he pointed out. David felt a moment, just a moment, of complete rapport with Birdsong.

  The boys treated David with neutrality. He was someone’s guest, that was all. They did not seem to remember him, and why would they? As a freshman and sophomore, when they might have known him, he was still a skinny and unremarkable little boy. Even now he was small in the chest, with thin arms, no matter how much he worked out. The two or three years the others had on him had filled them out. He felt dwarfed, outclassed.

  David played seriously, but until the last couple of sets, he avoided the smashing drives that characterized his best games. He was—face it—awed by the
company. He studied the haircuts of these boys who had been at schools in the East. The styles were different, a little longer. Somehow, Eastern.

  He made himself concentrate on the ball. He was really glad he had on a new shirt.

  They shook hands all around. In a moment David realized they had all gone off to shower and change. So here I am again! he thought, damning himself for not bringing clothes. He stood bewildered at the edge of the court, sweat running in rivulets down his face and neck. His shirt was soaked. Kimbrough handed him a towel, and then with another, began mopping his own face and neck and thighs. “Almost too hot for this, isn’t it?” he asked David amiably. David dabbed at himself. “The heat doesn’t get to me too bad, sir,” he said. “I like feeling I’ve worked hard.” He fought the urge to raise his arm and check his odor.

  “Sure you do!” Kimbrough barked. He threw his hot arm across David’s shoulder for a moment and steered him across the broad patio, past the pool, to a table with a large umbrella. Kimbrough was putting off a healthy smell himself. David felt better. “Have a seat there, young man,” Kimbrough said, “I’ll hurry up something to drink.” He took their towels.

  Mrs. Kimbrough and Beth Ann were already at the table. Mrs. Kimbrough was smoking. In front of her on the table were an ashtray and a tall frosted glass beaded with moisture. She wore wide-cuffed navy linen shorts and a pink silk shirt open low at the throat. She smiled and gestured for him to sit. He sat beside Beth Ann, leaning toward the empty chair on the other side of him.

  The girl looked cool and regal in a white sundress. The material was soft and fine, like good handkerchief cotton. At the shoulders, her straps had wide epaulets flapping onto her upper arms. She sat slightly stretched out in her chair, her rear end scooted up toward the edge and her legs extended into the sun. Her body was turned away from him. She looked at him over her shoulder. Light struck the down on her neck. She had tugged her dress skirt up to the edge of her knees. Her legs were glossy with oil. “Hi,” she said, and David felt something close to shock.

  He had never really looked at her before. She was someone he knew slightly at school. They were on Student Council together. She was often elected to things; he saw announcements in the school paper. Y-Teen, Junior Board. She was part of the special, almost magical inner circle of students for whom school was a wonderful experience, girls whom Glee was dying to join. (If one of them spoke to her, she would say, So and so was really nice to me today. So and so said she liked my skirt. It was sickening.) Beth Ann had always seemed remote in meetings, as if she were there as a favor to her constituency.

  Now, at the sound of her greeting, a single syllable, it struck him that there was a wonderful shyness about her. Modesty. The word sprang to mind. Beauty and modesty, the stuff of medieval ladies, of women in old English novels, of saints. He tried to see the round flesh of her shoulder; the cloth that obscured it was maddening.

  “You saved me from being humiliated today,” she said. Her whispery soft voice lacked Glee’s nasality, though their attitudes toward the words they spoke were a lot alike, gentle and breathy. She turned around and leaned her elbows on the glass table. She raised one hand to her head and spread her fingers in her hair, at the back of her neck.

  “I did?”

  “Daddy was going to make me play in that awful ole—tournament—or whatever it was. Me, and all those college boys!”

  “You play well enough, you could have done it.” He remembered that she had an admirably steady, dependable style, the product, he was certain, of many years’ practice. She was athletic just the way a girl ought to be, lean, graceful, and quick. And beautiful.

  “Oh sure,” she said, dipping her chin, saying with her face, Yes, I know I could have, but I like it that you said so. She surprised him. What was his opinion to her? He was gawky, naive in the company, however removed, of college boys. She played with a long strand of her hair, pulling gently, sliding her finger down it, out at the end, and then, after holding the very tip between her thumb and finger, she let it go, and let her arm down onto the back of her chair. The pose opened her shoulders and exposed her throat.

  There was a long moment of silence. Beth Ann was still and almost solemn in her expression. David felt his ears redden as he searched for something clever to say. He swallowed, and was mortified when the swallow was an audible gulp.

  “I think Hayden would have had to sit it out,” Mrs. Kimbrough said, “if we had not thought of you.” She looked at her daughter indulgently. “He could not have made Beth Ann play tennis if she didn’t want to.” She spoke in a lazy but well-articulated drawl, more Southern than West Texas. She seemed amused.

  “‘What a good idea,’ I told him,” Beth said. She looked to her mother. “I said, ‘He can play with Daddy, and then have lunch with Mommy and me.’”

  Her mother nodded. “So, here you are.”

  “Indeed he is.” Mr. Kimbrough set a tall glass of iced tea in front of David. It was garnished with a sprig of bright mint and a delicate slice of lemon. Kimbrough sat down with his own glass of beer. He lifted the glass in a toast, and the others lifted theirs. “To summer’s end,” he said. His daughter said, “To good sports,” smiling at David. “Hear, hear!” Mrs. Kimbrough said, and they all clicked glasses and drank.

  David wished for a photographer, to capture the moment for him. He could not believe he was there. Kimbrough had not mentioned Ellis in the invitation. When David told Ellis about coming—if he told him—he would say, They said it was too bad you were working and couldn’t make it. David had this disloyal, amazing thought, that Ellis would not have fit in.

  “I took the liberty of ordering our lunch,” Kimbrough said. His wife had taken out a fresh cigarette from a silver case on the table. He leaned to pick up her lighter and offer her the flame. The whole shared gesture was like something from a movie with Cary Grant. Actually, Kimbrough might even be better looking than Grant, with the same square jaw, smooth skin, Greek-god nose, and tall athletic build.

  “I am starving,” Mrs. Kimbrough said. David could see the curve of her breast pressing against the pink cloth of her draped shirt. He felt his own flesh stir. He readjusted himself in his seat, leaning onto the table on his elbows.

  Beth twirled her straw in her glass of Coke. “I could eat a roasted goat,” she said. Clearly, she could not. She was thin but very healthy-looking, and elegant, like her mother, not so thin as Audrey Hepburn, but much more like her than like the lush Elizabeth Taylor type. Her long mahogany hair, pulled back and caught up so that it cascaded onto her back, was waved around her head, balancing the largeness of her dark eyes and thick straight eyebrows, her large white teeth in a wide mouth. She had been voted Junior Prettiest the year before. Her skin was flawless, except for a tiny brown mole below her left eye, a “beauty spot” like some girls applied with a pencil. Her long brown arms moved languorously; her long fingers were tipped with oval nails the color of apricots. He thought, dismayed, that she was probably taller than he. He remembered seeing her with Walter Fleetwood, who was over six feet. He had never stood right beside her, himself. He was 5’8”, if he stood up straight; he hoped he had a last surge of growth in him.

  He thought of the times he had sat with Glee in her kitchen while she did her nails. He had liked the intimacy of it. They listened to her 45’s. She liked Buddy Holly, Tommy Edwards, Johnny Mathis. He lifted the stack to reset it while she waved her wet nails around in the air. He pulled her to her feet and they danced to “It’s All in the Game.”

  Beth had surely never groomed her own nails. They were perfect. The amazing shininess of her hair was like her mother’s though the styles were different. They wore no spray, their hair always fell back into place. That, he realized, was the beauty of a cut. They could go to the beauty parlor all they liked. Everything is better, done by an expert. He had a sudden, clear picture of Beth Ann and her mother, side by side, in black plastic chairs and pink bibs at Pearl’s Curls, their throats exposed as they lay arched, th
eir heads back in the deep basins, their scalps obscured by suds. The girls who washed their hair looked like Glee and his sister, Joyce Ellen.

  An arpeggio of laughter from the Kimbroughs made him aware that they had been talking while he drifted away. He smiled, hoping it was fitting, and that he did not need to say anything. He was aware of the particularity of his observations; he almost smiled again when he realized he wanted to go home and write them down.

  “Ah, here is lunch. You did a lovely job of choosing,” Mrs. Kimbrough said to her husband. The waitress laid before them bright white china plates and silverware, a plate of chicken salad and another of yellow cheese spread, flecked red with pimentos, a narrow silver platter lined with bread slices, and a bowl of olives and pickles.

  David found he was almost panting with hunger. “It sure does look delicious.” He was dry now. He reached up with the flat of his hand to smooth his hair, knowing his cowlick made it stick up after exercise. He kept an eye on Mrs. Kimbrough, and dipped the salad onto his plate in small mounds as she did on hers. He used the bread to slide food onto his fork, and ate it in alternating bites, instead of making a sandwich, as he would have if he were alone. The crispness of the celery and onion and apple in the chicken salad was delightful. To be polite, he ate a little cheese spread, though he did not like the gooey sauce that held the ground cheese together.

  “How did you spend your summer, David?” Beth Ann asked. She had a trace of her mother’s cultivated Southern accent.

  David felt himself flush. He chose his words carefully. “My father owns a small store in Fort Stockton. I ran that, and made trips for him to other towns in the region.” What else was there to say? The Kimbroughs would know nothing of shopping in beauty parlors, church halls, and parking lots. His cautious explanation would not conjure up embarrassing images. To them he would be what he was, or what he wanted to be: ambitious, energetic, dependable.