Walking Dunes (30 page)

He led her up a high sand dune, stumbling and sliding, laughing with self-consciousness. At the top, they paused, they looked at one another, laughing again, a bit bravely, and then they went down the other side.
Awww!
they heard the kids behind them cry.
Awww!

In a little while the group low in the crevice of the dunes wondered about the boy and the girl. They laughed and squealed and mimicked what they thought was going on over the hill. Someone said, we could go see. Giggling and stumbling and falling and climbing and growing more and more hilarious, they made their way to the top of the hill, and there, suppressing their laughter, then growing utterly quiet, they made a line along the crest. The wind was cold. The sky blazed with stars. The kids stood for a long while atop the dune, hugging their arms, watching.

David went into the bathroom and found his sister in the tub. She was lying back, her head against the enamel, her belly stuck up like a huge mound of risen dough. He groaned loudly at the sight, stumbled back a step, and knocked against the door behind him. Joyce Ellen wailed loudly. He turned and fled into the tiny hall, banging one fist into his other palm. “You could have locked the door!” he yelled. She shrieked, “What do you think it feels like! I'm a big blubbery whale! I know what you think!”

Mrs. Whittey had had her baby, a girl she named Rita. David took her a flannel blanket his mother had bought for Joyce Ellen. The baby looked like a pink prune. Mrs. Whittey seemed almost happy, sitting in a rocking chair with the baby in her arms. The children were in the yard and out in the street playing.

David sat on the porch steps with Ellis, sodden with pity. “What's going to happen, man?” he asked. Ellis shrugged and said something about taking it a day at a time.

“What about Betty?”

Ellis flinched. “She's going to go to secretarial school after graduation. Six months. Then she'll get a job, what else?”

“You guys want to get married?”

Ellis moaned. “I don't see how. I don't see it happening.”

“You could get a bigger house.”

Ellis spread his hands on his thighs. “You get married, and then there's another baby.”

“You're smarter than that.”

“I'm Catholic! She's Catholic!”

“Who'd know?”

Ellis shook his head. “She believes all of it. Mortal sin and excommunication and hell. Sex is for making babies.”

David wheezed with his next breath. He coughed noisily to cover it. “I'm sorry,” he said.

Ellis jumped to his feet. “There's a reason for everything! My mama says. The priest says. God sees ahead. It will work out.”

David wanted to put his arms around his friend, but he could not see his way to it. Awkwardly, he stuck his hand out, and Ellis pumped it twice. “See you,” David said. “See you,” Ellis said back.

David told Beth Ann, “Sometimes I don't think I can make it one more week. One more day! It's already over. All this winding down is a waste, it's boring, it's driving me crazy.” They were seated in lawn chairs in her garden, under a big pink and white striped awning. Her eyes were closed. He thought, if she's asleep, I'm going home right now.

Beth Ann stretched one arm up lazily. “You get so worked up, Davy.” His neck prickled at the name she called him. When had she started that?

He leaped up. “Let's get out of here. Go for a ride. Want to go out to the dunes?”

She made a face. “Too sandy,” she said, and they both laughed loudly. She held her arm out to him.

He drove them in the station wagon, out to her grandparents' old ranch house, ten miles east of town. He had never seen the place. The old couple lived in Midland, but the whole family went out to the ranch for summer barbecues. Everyone came for July 4th. A Mexican couple lived out there to keep it up.

Within sight of the house, the station wagon came to an overheated, steaming halt. Beth Ann sat placidly in her seat while he looked under the hood. He knew next to nothing about cars, but he could see the radiator boiling over, and he knew they were not going to drive anytime soon. “Damn!” he muttered.

“It's not so bad,” Beth Ann drawled. “Luis will know what to do.” She took his hand and led him to the drive and up to the large white clapboard ranch house, with its long graceful veranda. A Mexican woman came out of the front door, banging the screen. She shaded her eyes to peer down the drive. Beth Ann called out, “It's me, Maria. Beth!” and the woman broke into a huge smile.

Luis said it was the fan belt, and set off for town in his pickup to get one. Beth Ann led David around the house. All the old things were dusted and arranged, as in a museum. Kerosene lamps and dainty dishes, crocheted antimacassars adorned polished tables; family photographs and paintings of Western scenes hung on the wall. In the bedrooms, the iron beds were covered with quilts in complex patterns of bright cotton.

Beth Ann sat down on one of the beds, and motioned for David to sit beside her. “Just think, this was the best of the best at one time.”

“It looks pretty nice to me right now.”

“When I was a little little girl we still had an outhouse, even though they had plumbing by then. It was like a monument. I tried to imagine going out there in February, or in a dust storm.”

“They had to be hardy people, ranchers.”

“I'm glad I live now.”

He pecked her cheek. “I'm glad, too, because if you'd lived then you'd be an old hag and I wouldn't love you.”

She looked startled. “Do you love me?”

It was he who was startled, as if grasshoppers had jumped out of his mouth.

“Do you?”

He kissed her seriously. She had a sweet, toothpasty taste. She pressed against him for a moment, then pulled away. “
Do
you?” Her hair was disheveled and her breath uneven. For the first time ever he thought about taking her clothes off, seeing her naked. He wondered if she would be so haughty, so perfect, then.

“You know I do,” he said steadily.

She lay back on the bed, smiling at him. One finger idly traced a block of stitching on the quilt. He imagined her hand on his body, a cold thrilling thought. She said, “Sometimes I think about us in a little apartment in Austin. There's a bed with lots of pillows, and one of my grandmother's quilts.”

“I didn't know you thought like that.”

“You don't?”

“I don't
have
anything,” he said, almost angrily. The future was far, far away. He had been a fool, thinking it would burst upon him, sparkling; what he saw now was a long grind, and nothing sure at the end. Beth Ann would not know about working for what you wanted, or about doing without.

“But you will.”

“It's a long way off.”

She yawned, collected again. Even the disorder of her hair looked arranged. “I know it is. I want to pledge my mother's sorority. There are things you just have to do or you'll be sorry ever after.” She sat up, and reached for his hand.

“So you're going to go to Austin, too?” he asked.

“I might go to SMU for a year. That's where my mother went. But I could transfer whenever—”

“Whenever what?”

She ducked her head shyly. He thought the gesture looked almost rehearsed. “You still didn't say, Davy.”

“I did.”

“You answered a question. That's not the same.”

He slid to his knees in front of her. He took her hands, looked up at her, and said, “Beth Ann Kimbrough, I love you.” His heart was pounding hard. They had just been talking about marriage, hadn't they? What would her parents say?

“Let's go see what Maria's got in the kitchen,” Beth Ann said brightly. “There's bound to be beans.”

They sat at a table in a room with windows looking out on a vista of sand and sky. In the fields he could see half a dozen pumps. This was how ranchers got rich. The table had a red and white checked cloth on it. They ate bowls of pinto beans, tortillas, and hunks of fresh white cheese. He felt like someone in a Western movie, the house like a set.

Maria brought in a pitcher of lemonade that clinked with ice. David drank two glasses straightaway. Luis came in to say the car was ready. “Muchas gracias,” David said impulsively. Luis replied gravely. “De nada, señor.”

When they had driven out of the ranch roads onto the highway, David asked Beth Ann, “When you think about the bed in Austin? What are we doing in it? Do you think of that, Beth?”

She reached over to run her fingers lightly down his thigh. He moved her hand away. She arranged herself primly and said, “I want to be a virgin when I marry.”

“Of course.”

“I'd like it if you became a lawyer.”

“Like your daddy.”

“Yes.”

“Whatever you say, Beth Ann.” He meant to tease, but it came out utterly serious. They glanced at one another, then looked away. He thought they understood one another. It did not seem any of it had been his idea.

31.

Sissy was waiting for him on his back step. A small fist of anger struck inside his chest, seeing her there. She would want something; they all wanted something.

She looked sad and tired. She had a light sunburn across her cheeks and nose. “You're pink,” he said gently.

“It doesn't hurt.”

“I'm beat, Sissy. I was going to take a nap.”

“That's okay. I just wanted to give you this.” She held out a spiral-bound notebook. “Could you keep it for me?”

“Your notebook?” He held it gingerly; something told him this was not a good idea.

“We're doing spring cleaning. Turning the mattresses, taking down the curtains. I don't want my ma to find it. You can read it, if you want.”

He felt sorry for her. “We haven't talked in a long time, have we?”

She shrugged. “You're busy.”

He opened his door. “I'll keep it for you.”

She stood there as if there were something he had forgotten to do. “You can read it.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

He waited until she was in the alley before he went inside.

It was quiet in the house. A pot of something was simmering on the stove. He peered into the living room. His mother was sewing a button on a blouse. She saw him and smiled. “You hungry?”

“Not much.”

“I made soup, eat it any time.”

“Where is everybody?”

“Saul's gone to play poker. Joyce Ellen is lying down.”

“Is she okay, Ma? Earlier, she was all upset.”

“Be patient, son. It's very, very hard to walk around with thirty pounds of baby and water and extra flesh.”

“I'm going to my room.”

He meant to sleep, but he was curious about Sissy's notebook. Each entry was dated and neatly written. Sometimes she wrote only a line or two:

Mr. Wickers farted in history class and turned beet red, but he kept right on talking
.

I think my dad hit my mother last night. I heard her squeal. I hope he gets another job away from home
.

Other entries were long and detailed. Turning the pages, he noticed his own name sprinkled throughout the book.

I saw David today but he didn't see me
.

David's really good in the play. He makes you see how hard Creon's responsibility was. I wouldn't want to be somebody who has to make people do things
.

When did David break up with Glee?

And later:

David kissed me at the party. He acted silly about it, but he did kiss me. He wanted to
.

There was a long entry about a boy named Jerry Cooper. David knew him. He was a junior, a boy who seemed to have a lot of friends. Sissy was remembering something that had happened at the municipal pool the summer before. She had watched Coop goofing around on the high board; he tried a fancy dive and did a belly flop. He must have come up stunned with pain, and everybody laughed at him.

David could imagine the scene: the hooting and good-natured shouts. You made points with your friends when you laughed at yourself. Coop was popular enough. They wouldn't have been making fun of him, but they would not have cared either, if he was really hurting. They would not have seen it the way Sissy did, from the sidelines. She wrote:

I wanted to go up to him and say I was sorry, but I knew he would think I was kissing up. I wouldn't mind kissing up, either
.

Then there was a page where she wrote something he realized he had known, and ignored. She wrote:
I want to die
.

Jesus
, he thought, slapping the book with the flat of his hand.

She wrote that her baby brother had spit up on her new blouse.
Oh well
, she wrote,
I think I'll wear my pajamas when I go, anyway
.

David's chest felt tight. What the hell? he thought. What did she want him to do?

I don't have the nerve to do it without help. David won't do it. He'll see the danger in it for him. I can ask Leland. He wants so much to have an adventure
.

He turned the page. There was only one line written on it, and it was underlined.

They watched
.

David crammed the notebook under his mattress, shoved his pillow under his chest and his arm under his face, and shut his eyes. He would give it back to her tomorrow. Whatever she was trying to do, trying to make him do, it wouldn't work. Everybody wanted him to
do
things. Everybody had ideas.

One came to him. He sat back up. He retrieved his dusty notebook from the floor by the bed and wiped it with a corner of his sheet. He turned the pages slowly. There was a lot in it, he just had not taken any of his story ideas far enough. He was glad he had written what he had, because it would be there when he needed it, when he was ready.

There was a man who painted china
, he wrote. He was thrilled by the sentence, because he did not know where it came from. The story appeared, whole in his mind.