David still had not seen Leland. He looked up over the heads of his companions and scanned the crowd. He spotted Sarah Jane Cottle, and got up so abruptly he spilled the remains of his macaroni onto the lawn. “What’s the matter?” Glee asked, startled by his sudden move.
“Here,” he said, shoving his tray toward hers with his foot, “take mine back, will you? I’ll catch you later.” He didn’t give her a chance to protest, and he didn’t look back to catch the alarm and anger he knew would fill her face when she saw where he was headed.
“Wait up, Sarah!” he called as she started into the building. Inside, she leaned against a wall, her arms at her sides, her palms flat against the wall, looking very small and neat and prim. He put an arm on each side of her head and smiled close to her face. “I wasn’t kidding,” he said.
After school he went to see Sissy at the hospital. She was looking even better, and she was pleased to see him. She was glazing a ceramic ash tray, painting on tiny pansies around the edge. “My daddy can use this,” she said.
He let himself in at Leland’s, said hello to Mrs. Piper, who was folding laundry on the couch, and went into Leland’s room. There were at least a dozen model airplanes hanging from the ceiling, leftovers from years before, and on the floor, piles of magazines. Leland had a big bulletin board on one wall, covered with clippings from the newspaper, and photographs of Kim Novak.
“What’s with you and the Johnny Black Knights?” David demanded. The name was his invention. He didn’t know if the crowd he had seen that morning had a name, but he’d heard of some of the gangs: the Dust Devils, the Cougars, the Mesquite Snakes. He had heard about brutal fights, not gang to gang, but single combat matches, fought until one or the other was pulverized. And drag races, the favorite diversion of teen-age boys in Basin, were always won by hoods if they bothered to appear. Those boys seemed only to menace one another. At school they were distant, cool, except when one would get pushed too far, or come to school stoned. David had been in a class his sophomore year when Clint Stripling pulled a knife that must have been eight inches long in old lady Trupp’s English class. He made a show of sharpening his pencil, and when she commanded him to “Put that thing away!” he set to carving in the desk top like she was telling him to do that instead. And what had come of that? He could not remember. Probably Stripling’s transfer to a male teacher’s class, nothing more.
“Listen, Puckett, those guys know how to party.” Leland launched into a speech about the sandhills, beer busts, girls with creamy thighs. Stripling’s brother worked at the Pearl Beer warehouse. Wanda somebody was said to have given twenty blowjobs in one night. Leland had been with a bunch of them the day and night they dug a pit and roasted half a pig.
“You’re telling me you hung out with those jerkos this summer?” David still didn’t know if Leland was putting him on. But there he had been this morning, like one more thug in the land of thugs.
“I went along a few times. Hey, what was there to do, buddy? Sell screws in my dad’s store all day long. Those guys always have beer. They’ve got great cars. And oh man—” He groaned and grabbed his crotch, then grinned.
“So what else aren’t you telling? You horny-toad, you stuffed it up some girl, didn’t you?”
“Aw no, man, but shee-it, at least with them there’s possibility. It could happen. It’s not out of the question.”
David cuffed Leland on the chin. “Is it like the country club, Piper? Do you have to get voted on? Do you have to qualify?”
“Fuck one of their women and you’re in.”
“How do you do that? Is it your idea or theirs?”
“Shit, Puckett, I don’t know yet.”
“I gotta go, I got a date.”
“Oh man, you’re so lucky. That nice Glee—”
“It’s not Glee.”
“Why not?”
“I got an itch, that’s all. It’s somebody else.”
“Somebody new! How do you do it, you aren’t even in town.”
“Somebody else, that’s all I said. Piper, you watch it. Those guys, they’ll cut you up to feed to their dogs.”
“Man, they ain’t got dogs. They just got fast cars and fast girls, and buckets of booze.”
David shook his head. “Sounds like trouble to me.”
Leland spoke urgently. “That’s cause you don’t need it. That’s cause you already got what you need. You’re not jacking off into a wad of toilet paper—”
“You foul asshole,” David said in friendly fashion. “You’ve got just one thing on your mind, don’t you?”
“Shit, man, what else is there?”
Saul was in his workroom finishing up a stack of repairs for the dry cleaners. The room was an oven. Saul, working in his boxers and an undershirt, had two fans going in his direction. David moved one so it would blow on him as he sat on a box. He told his father his new school schedule. His father had pins in his mouth the whole time, a convenient way to avoid comment. Mmmn, he said once or twice. He peered at the cuffs of trousers and did not look at his son.
“What’s for din-din, hey Pop?” David felt intrusive. He could feel anger seeping up over him like water standing in a bar-ditch. The evening stretched out in front of him. He didn’t feel up to seeing Glee. She was going to want to talk about what’s wrong. He didn’t want to argue. He didn’t want to talk at all, or screw, either.
Saul took the pins out of his mouth and lined them up in a pin cushion. “Your mother got some TV dinners. We have to eat them tonight because they’re supposed to be frozen and they’re defrosting in the fridge. Go see what you can make of them.”
“I could make a salad or something—”
“Rabbit food. Not worth the trouble. Go peel back those cardboard wonders and see what we got.”
The dinners were Mexican: enchiladas with rubber cheese strings on top, a little hard dab of beans, bright rice, each serving in a section bounded by a ridge. It seemed crazy to turn on the oven, it was still hot as hell, without a sign of a break in the weather. But he did not want to eat canned soup, and he did not want to go to the store, either. He did not want to suggest going out; he couldn’t bear the idea of sitting across from his father in a cafe, trying to make conversation.
He called Sally Cottle. He tried to make a little conversation about the day, but she wasn’t giving him much. Finally he blurted out, “I wondered if you’d want to go to the movies Friday. There’s an Elvis at the Star Palace.”
“I don’t think so, David.”
He could not believe his ears. “You’ve got plans? Or—you won’t go out with me? What?”
He counted to ten, waiting for her to answer. He wasn’t about to back off; he had his neck out there for her to hack at with her stupid grudge.
Finally she said, “I didn’t think you were serious. I saw you with Glee at lunch.”
“I told you I was serious. Look, here I am.”
She sighed. “Why don’t you come over after supper? Tonight, about eight?”
“Sure, sure. You want to go get a Coke or something? We could drag the strip and see who’s out. We could go to the Bronco and have one of those green lime passion things.”
She giggled. “I can’t stand their drinks.”
“Whatever you want,” he said expansively. His chest was hurting.
“Just come here. We can talk at my house.”
He tried to make conversation with Saul. There seemed to be only school to talk about; Saul never discussed the weather. “The counselor called me in. He said I don’t have enough in my schedule. He wanted me to take physics or calculus.”
“Mmm,” his father said. His undershirt was frayed at the edges under his arm.
The enchiladas had bubbled around the edges, but there was a cold spot in the center of each, and the tortillas were soggy and rubbery. “I’m not a scientist, we know that, don’t we?” David sounded like a salesman to himself. “I thought about adding electronics, Leland could help me with that, but I said I�
�d take speech. Speech can’t be that hard—” He saw that Saul was annoyed, though he couldn’t tell if it was the beans or the speech. “Maybe I’ll be a lawyer, right? Whatever you do, you can’t go wrong working on your speaking ability.”
“You learn to tell people one thing and mean another,” his father said. Some rice clung to his mustache.
“I don’t think so. I think you learn to be clear. To be forceful, get your ideas across.” He had heard speech was a snap, that was why he had signed up. He had had three hours the counselor said were “empty”: study hall, library aide, and tennis practice. “How are those empty?” he had argued. “I have to be someplace, don’t I?” But it was true study hall was a waste of time, he wouldn’t be able to practice much during the winter months, and being an aide was an excuse to see the magazines first when they came in, and to talk to the girls working on research assignments.
“I’m not telling you learn to lie,” his father was saying. “I’m saying, learn to keep your counsel. Choose what you want to say before you let your mouth run loose.”
“That sounds so—self-conscious, Pop.”
“You think the world wants you honest? You think what you’ve got is so great you can let it hang out there for the world to get to know? It’s like chess, Sonny. You guess what your opponent’s got in mind—”
“I’m not going to do debate. Just the class.”
“I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT DEBATE, I’M TALKING ABOUT LIFE.”
“All right, all right, don’t get so excited.”
Saul tossed his throwaway carton into the sink, splattering sauce and rice over the porcelain. “Garbage,” he said.
David followed his father into the living room. Saul kicked off his shoes, picked up his copy of Crime and Punishment, arranged the fan on its stand and turned it on, and settled down with his feet on the ottoman. He wiggled his toes and they popped.
David stood in front of his father. “It seems really important to me to know how to say what you mean. It sounds like you’re saying you need to know how to say what you don’t mean. How to—”
Saul waved him away and found his place in his book. Without looking up, he said, “You don’t get what I tell you, be my guest. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Put your head up your ass. You’ll find something to do, it won’t matter. Won’t matter what you say, if no one’s listening.”
“What do you WANT!” David felt like his chest was exploding. He could not understand how they ended up in these utterly pointless arguments. “Here’s a good example! You’ve outscored me and I don’t know what to do but yell at you! I don’t even know what the game is!”
Saul laughed. “What you’re good at is talking to girls, Davy boy. You could be a pimp, maybe.”
David felt dizzy. He was so hot. “You dirty sot,” he muttered. He went out the back, and walked all the way to the hospital, to borrow his mother’s car to go see Sarah. It took forty minutes. His breath came hard, but it was good for him. It took a hell of a lot of stamina to play tennis, you could never stop working on it. On the ward he stripped in the staff lavatory and wiped himself down with a dampened paper towel. “I’ll come up later and stay till you’re done,” he told Marge. She was pleased, as if he were doing something for her. “That’s nice,” she murmured. “Like limo service.”
“It’s your car, Ma,” he laughed. If they had been alone, he would have kissed her.
He sat on the Cottles’ fake Early American couch, clutching a bottle of RC Cola, wondering at his own discomfort. He had gone to a lot of trouble for this! Sarah was perfectly courteous, formal in a way he thought somebody might act after a funeral, or at a job interview. She was wearing a pale blue shirtwaist dress, not what she had been wearing at school earlier. They exchanged information about their plans for the new school year. Yes, he would be playing tennis (what a question!), and yes he would be on student council again if he was re-elected next week. Yes she was in Y-Teen, and was volunteering at the hospital as a candy striper. He could not remember anything else about her.
He took a long swallow of the cold sweet drink. “I thought about you a lot,” he began, and his voice trailed away. It was a lie, except for the past few days, and he could not think how to extend the lie. He wanted her to think she was special. You had to make a girl feel that way, if you wanted her to like you.
“I don’t believe that for one minute.” She was not smiling.
“Sarah, lots of kids date and stop dating and still stay friends. We hadn’t made any promises, there was nothing like that between us.”
“You might have said something.”
“I felt so awkward. I didn’t know why I didn’t call, but weeks went by and then it felt too late.” He set the drink down on the coffee table, and saw, too late, that it would make a wet ring. There were coasters on the end tables, but they were too far away. He leaned against the couch back, breathed deeply, and tried to relax. “Sometimes I think that what happens is mostly whatever hits you as you come around the corner. Have you ever thought of that?”
“Of what, David?”
“The element of chance in everything.”
“No, I can’t say that I have. I think more of the element of choice.”
Very good, he thought. “I think you may be a more serious person than I am,” he lied. “I didn’t know that about you.” He chuckled. “I guess that’s because I’m not smart enough to figure out other people, specially girls.” She had no expression whatsoever. She might have been posing for a portrait. “I think I underestimated you.”
“My parents said, ‘Where’s that nice David Puckett, honey? Did you all have a fight?’”
“Heavens, I can’t imagine fighting with you.”
“You think I don’t have enough spirit?” She was sitting up very straight. She had not brought in a drink for herself. His bottle of RC was sweating big droplets onto the table top.
“I think you’re not the quarrelsome type.”
“I have opinions. They’re not always the same as other people’s. The same as boys’. As yours.”
“We never disagreed.”
“No. I said, Oh David, tell me about your game today. I said, what color crepe will they be using for the Sweetheart Dance? I said, what did you think of that movie, that TV show? Tell me what you think, I said.”
“It doesn’t sound like a very good time, the way you tell it.” He felt very deflated. At the same time, he was intrigued. Here was a girl he thought he knew, a girl he thought there wasn’t much to know about. And she was a surprise. He liked a surprise, even if it scared him a little.
She had put on records. A Johnny Mathis record had finished, and the machine made a series of noises as the arm lifted and made room for the next record to fall. It was Dean Martin, probably something of her parents’.
“I always wanted to be married some day,” she said. “Not right away, not right out of high school, but some day.”
“Well, sure—”
“I’m not talking about you. Don’t look so nervous. I’m talking about me. I have a hope chest, do you know about them? A nice cedar chest, it smells so good when you open it up. At Christmas and on my birthday, my mother and my grandmothers give me things for my hope chest. Linens, a salt and pepper set, matching book ends, towels, stuff like that. For when I get married. Shh, don’t talk. It’s my turn.
“I’ve always known I’d be a virgin when the time came. You know, girls dream about these things, about having a white gown and veil, and walking up the aisle. And I think about that first night. I don’t really know how it happens. There’s a big blank place in there where I can’t really imagine what he says, what I say, who does what. But I know I will be able to look at this—man—my husband—and I will be able to say, there’s never been anyone but you.”
“What’s this about, Sarah Jane?” He was so hot he felt he might ignite any minute. Desperate, he reached for his pop and took a long thick drink.
She was staring off through the pictur
e window that looked out onto the dark street. A nearby street lamp cast a yellow haze over his mother’s car in front. She looked back at him. She seemed to have awakened from a nap. She reached up to pat her hair into place, though it was in no way disarrayed. “And you could tell, couldn’t you?”
“I never tried anything with you!” He was too embarrassed to say that he had been a virgin, too. What a dumb, dumb thing. Why was she saying all this?
“You knew it would never happen. It’s something on my face. My father says that. Sarah, anybody can look at you and see you’re a good girl. You’re not one of those girls who asks for it. And you could see that, you knew I’d never—do it—with you, so you quit calling. You gave up without trying.” Bitterly, she added, “Good for you.”
He stood up. Then he didn’t know what he wanted to do. “That’s crazy. I never thought that of you.”
“Oh you did,” she said, staring at her feet.
“You’ve got me all wrong! I stopped calling you because of your family.”
She looked up sharply. He could see she was insulted, though there was nothing she should mind, if he could just explain.
“You were all so happy, you see. I would come here and the three of you—you’d be smiling. You’d talk to one another so nicely, like families in the movies. You ate at a dining table, with napkins. Your mother treated me so—respectfully. It’s not like that in my family, Sarah. It’s not the way I live. I was—not exactly jealous—I didn’t mind that you were happy. I didn’t want you not to be. But all the time I spent in your house, it made me unhappy. It made me feel cheated in my own life.”
She was almost sneering. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
“I didn’t have to have a reason, did I?” he said loudly, cornered. “Kids date, and then they don’t date. It’s not a big deal. It’s what being a teen-ager is for. I didn’t have to give you a reason. It’s up to me to call!”
She stood up abruptly. “I have to study now.” Such a lie! “I just wanted you to know how much I minded, how cheap it made me feel.”
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