Walking Dunes (11 page)

Around the edge of the brown brittle grass stood neatly-dressed kids who made up the fans and compatriots of the central figures. These were girls and boys who dressed like those they admired—the girls with more style and money—and who dated among themselves and were usually occupied making signs for the elections of others, working in minor roles on the newspaper, the yearbook, and various projects throughout the year. The caste of kids who most clearly did not belong—they did not bother even with Future Farmers of America or Distributive Education clubs—stayed off campus until the bells rang. They sat on the bumpers of souped-up cars, or on the seats of motorcycles. Girls hung off of boys like appendages, draping themselves in poses that showed their round rumps. David was amazed to see, as he rounded the corner, that Leland was in this company, standing with Stripling, Nesmith, Eckhard, and other hoods who wore their hair long, slicked back into ducktails with high waves on the top, their tee-shirts rolled at the sleeves, their pants so tight there seemed to be no room to allow them to sit down. There were no girls on Leland's arms, but he was in their company, girls with blackened or hennaed or bleached hair, wearing tight short skirts and provocative blouses some of them might even be sent home for.

“Davy, hi!”

He turned and saw Glee fifteen feet or so away. She was in a cluster of girls who had, collectively, probably put in a week's work getting ready for their entry into the year. Every hair on every girl's head was in place. Skirts were crisp, little low flats were polished to a high shine. “Oh hi, David,” a couple more of them called, and he had no choice but to call back, “Oh hi, Doris, hi Twyla, hi Janie.” He took an instant to consider whether he would go up to them. It would launch Glee's day right—maybe even her year—to have him trot over to her like a pup on a leash, but he could not. To make up for it, he smiled hugely and called out, “See you at lunch?” He saw her expressions, like a sequence of snapshots: the flash of disappointment, a gloss of anger, then, at his wave, the relief at his date-making. “Yes, sure!” she answered, but then a thought darkened her look again and she broke from her friends and ran up to him. “But
which lunch?
”

He wanted to shake her by the arm and tell her, keep your shirt on. Instead, conscious of her friends, of all the eyes watching her—pretty and popular sweet cheerleader Glee—he smiled and tucked his head a little in a way he knew looked tender, and in a low, almost menacing voice he said, “I'll meet you at the entrance to the library at break and we'll compare schedules, Glee. We'll see if this is going to work out. Now go giggle it up with your friends while I go talk to mine,
this isn't a date.
” It struck him that she was utterly confused. All she had to do was look around: however tight couples were, they had separated for this first-morning ritual. In later weeks you could check out the pairings by looking at the morning arrangements, especially on Mondays and Fridays, but today was something larger than courtship. And if you stood around like lovebirds, either you were engaged or you were totally out of it, a joke you didn't catch.

Glee's whole face tightened. Her wide eyes flickered. “Do I embarrass you?” she whimpered. “Or are you trying to embarrass me? Are you going to start my year out like this?
Did I do something wrong?
”

He put his hand on her shoulder. Her blouse was crisp and sun-warmed. He pecked her on the cheek. “The library at break,” he said, and turned before she could as much as take another breath.

When the bell rang at 8:15, the temperature was already hovering near ninety, but the building itself was fairly cool. Only those rooms receiving direct sunlight would be uncomfortable early in the day. Everyone trooped through the gym, sending up an incredible din, and picked up their schedules in lines, divided by their last names. His sheet had a note to see the counselor at eleven, after break. By ten, most kids were in their assigned home rooms, accomplishing nothing more than finding their rooms, hearing their names called, making corrections, exiting in herds to shove their way to the next station. Teachers weren't even passing out books. Most acted bored. There was time only for the most cursory introductions. Teachers tried to show that they were strict, or jolly, a good guy or a serious type, as if every senior didn't already know every teacher, didn't already have stories out of the lore of past classes. The assistant football coach in civics told two stupid jokes and led a lame mock cheer for the team before dismissing. Only honors English seemed serious. Mrs. Schwelthelm had the carriage of a queen. “We will read and learn,” she told them. English would carry the year for David.

He and Glee did have the same lunch, first shift. They met at the cafeteria, where they bought lunches of gray macaroni and tomatoes and carried them out to sit on the stiff lawn. Now seated, students looked different from the morning. They were less arranged and more colorful, like scarves blown onto the ground. David and Glee joined other kids, and everyone compared schedules and complained, talked about the heat, and speculated on the outcome of the first game, with Abilene.

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 possi
bil
ity. 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.