Walking Dunes (9 page)

9.

“I already know you.” Sissy interrupted David when he tried to introduce himself again. She had been so dopey Saturday. “Everybody knows David Puckett.” She didn't seem to remember him from when she was picked up.

“But not you,” she said to Leland, rather solemnly. She sat on the daveno near the television, looking limp and pale. She smiled at Leland. She was wearing rolled-up bluejeans and a plain white blouse with a dingy collar. Her fine hair was caught back on each side above her ears with crossed bobbypins.

The boys had pulled up straight-backed chairs to sit near her. Leland grinned. “Heck, nobody knows the brainy kids,” he drawled easily. “Leland Piper.” He winked at David so that Sissy could see. “Last year in chemistry, who was it figured out his mystery compound in only twenty minutes, when other kids took three class periods?” He patted his chest. “Yours truly, ole Leland Piper. And who won county Ready Math at the spring meet?”

Sissy giggled. “Ole Leland?”

Nurse Mayfield looked up from her desk and shot them a sour look. When David and Leland had asked admittance, she told them David had the wrong night. Didn't he know when his mother was off? He politely explained that he was there to see the teen-ager, Sissy. He had come because his mother asked him to. That was when he learned the rest of her name. Cecilia Dossey. The nurse had to think about it a minute, but she let them in. Not for long, she told them. “She only got up and dressed today. I don't want you wearing her out.” David supposed Mayfield didn't mean to sound as vulgar as she did.

“I'm a sophomore,” Sissy said. “Oh my!” She clapped her fingers to her mouth. “I'm a junior now. Here it is next year.” She clouded up and tears welled in her eyes. “That's why you don't know me,” Leland said, as if they had been puzzling over it. “We'd never have had classes in the same hall.”

To David, Sissy said, “We live on the same alley.”

“Pardon?”

“I live on North Buckhorn, and you live on Lamar. So you face west off the alley, and I face east. It's like being neighbors, except two blocks apart. I see you sometimes, cutting down the alley off Fourth. You walk right by my bedroom window.”

“Shoot, I only live a couple blocks furthern you,” Leland told Sissy. “Coming from David's. Seventh and Myrtle? Brown house, red trim?”

Sissy was fiddling with her blouse. The top button was loose.

“I bet the nurse can fix that,” David said. His mother would have, if she had time.

Sissy hid the button with two fingers. “I can't lose it. My mama would be mad. She brought this blouse up to me specially this morning.”

“She won't know.” David leaned toward her. “Unless she's coming back. Is she? You could change.” Around them were patients and visitors. There were odd bursts of laughter, a woman in tears, much whispering, as though people were asleep in the room. When relatives came to visit people in the mental ward, they acted like the crazy ones.

Sissy said, “Mama can't come back. There's baby Moses at home, and Daddy won't babysit.”

“Maybe your daddy will come,” Leland said cheerfully. The sore place on his chin had a crust now, and a bright red halo.

Tears oozed out of Sissy's eyes.

“Shh.” David poked Leland. “Go get her a Kleenex at the nurse's station.”

David told Sissy, “You don't have to be scared of anything in here. That's what this place is for, to make you feel safe. See, I even come up to visit, myself. I like it here.” He had often tried to imagine what it would be like to wake up in one of these pale green rooms. Sissy nodded slowly. He thought she was getting tired. “You can sleep, and not think too much. You aren't supposed to worry.”

“Miss Chester says—” Her voice crackled.

“Who's Miss Chester?”

“From welfare? She said they're finding me a family to go live with. Away from my daddy.”

“They'll probably be really nice.”

“I miss the baby. A baby is so pure.”

Leland handed her a tissue and sat back down. “The nurse says two minutes is all.”

David said, “Want me to come tomorrow, Sissy?”

“Sure.”

“Want me to bring you a Baby Ruth or something?”

“Why would you?”

“We're neighbors, aren't we?”

“I don't like candy. I need a notebook.”

“Oh yeah? To write in?”

“A lined notebook, regular kind, yay big—” She shaped it in the air. “I have one at home almost used up. It's under my mattress. I'd be in lots of trouble if they found it. But I miss it—I'm used to writing every day.”

“Really! I keep a notebook, too.”

“If you don't have your notebook, your secrets crowd up in your head.”

“They'd give you paper.”

“It's not the same, all loose.”

“I'll come by after school.”

“School,” she echoed. He could see her attention fade in an instant. She was clutching her hands together so tightly the knuckles were white and the tops bright pink. “Sometimes I wonder, would it be pretty on the other side? Peaceful, and pretty?”

“Other side?”

She squeezed her hands. He could barely hear her whispered reply. “In heaven.”

Leland whooped as they got to the car. “She's a sad little chick, ain't she?”

“She is a little like a chick,” David said. “Something tiny, without feathers.”

“She's cute. I mean, if she felt better, rolled her hair and all, she might be worth a try.”

“I didn't think of that. Of you liking her.” She had said she was a junior; she was older than he thought at first.

“She's never done it, you can tell that a mile away.”

“She's not always going to be in 2-West,” David said. He sounded so sly, he felt ashamed.

“Didja read about the hula hoop contest in Cleveland, Ohio?” Leland's long legs, crossed at the ankles, looked tangled.

“I guess I missed that.” David knew he was going to be the straight man for a joke or a horror story. He thought that was why Leland read the paper every day, to look for wild things to tell him.

“This little girl almost had it won, but then her panties fell down.”

David chuckled. “That it?”

“Think about it,” Leland said. “Oh man. Her underwear down around her ankles, her heinie bare as butter under her dress.”

“It doesn't do a thing for me, Leland, thinking that.”

“Hell no. You get to see 'em for real, big enough to poke.”

“Not twirling hula hoops.” Sometimes Leland was downright disgusting, but he only said these things to David. They had been friends since third grade; they'd even moved to Basin the same year. His father had bought an Ace Hardware store.

“A girl eleven years old won. She spun three hoops for nearly fifteen minutes. Don't that beat all?”

They would not put in the paper if a kid dropped her panties, David thought. He made it up. “You're the one beats all,” he said, and laughed.

“Whooey!” said Leland.

David went into the house from the alley. He checked the washing machine. There was a washed load in it, not very wet. It was probably the same laundry his mother had put in the morning before. He set it to rinse again.

He walked through the house to the front door and checked the street. His mother's car was gone, and his father's was parked on the edge of the yard.

The front room was closed-up and hot. He unbuttoned his shirt and fanned himself with a folded newspaper. He lifted the shades partway and opened windows to try to get some ventilation. The air was not moving. The sills had a thick coat of dust. Only the bedrooms had coolers. The door to his parents' room was shut, so he assumed Saul was in there, staying cool.

His mother had been to the store. There was hamburger in the refrigerator, and on the counter, a box of spaghetti, two cans of tomato sauce, and a packet of seasoning mix. He made supper. He had been making spaghetti since he was eight years old. He also made a fair stew, a tuna and green bean casserole, chops, and omelets. He got sick of sandwiches, cereals, canned soups, and had learned to cook rather than wait on his mother's occasional bursts of domestic fervor. The one good thing about Aunt Cheryl's was that there was always a lot of food.

Marge appeared and blurted, “I didn't mean for you to do that, honey.” She wore loose trousers and an old man's shirt, tied at the waist. She threw her purse on the floor and began buttering bread. She sprinkled on garlic salt, and put the bread in the oven to toast. Two pots sat on the back burners.

He took one of his father's beers and sat at the table. He watched his mother watch the bread toasting; she kept the oven door cracked for the few minutes it took. He could not imagine that she really thought it was worth sending that broiler heat into the kitchen, but when she scooted the toast onto a plate and set it on the table, he broke one in half and wolfed it down in three bites. “Go on,” she scolded. “Go get your father.” She set the table.

Saul came to the table wearing the bottoms of a pair of soft flannel pajamas and a white undershirt cut deep at the armholes. The hair on his chest was thick above the scoop of the tee shirt. David had the awful thought that someday he would turn into his father. Despite his drinking, Saul was still a relatively thin man, with a firm chest and ropy arms. He had bright black eyes, bushy brows, and a hooked, although not large, nose. David took his size and shape from his father rather than his mother—Marge was taller, and larger-boned—but he had the sandy coloring of a Puckett, and his face did not really resemble either of them. Both his parents had curly hair, but his own was coarse, stiff, and straight. He kept it cut short, though not mowed down as many boys did. If it grew too long, his cowlick made it stick out in two directions at the crown. He combed the very front straight up, and had a habit of brushing at it with the palm of his hand.

David waited for his father to yell at him about the beer. When Saul did not do so, David took another long swallow, and set the bottle on the floor by his chair. They ate in silence. Never able to bear the tension that hung in the air when the three of them spent time together, he tried to tell them about the matches he'd played that morning. His mother interrupted, the way you might cut off a child retelling a long movie plot. “Did you have a
good time?
” she asked. He said he did. She had never learned enough about tennis to know what was going on. Win or lose was her whole vocabulary, and all his father cared about.

“So who wanted you out at the clubby club?” Saul demanded. “That girl who called?”

David told him what Kimbrough had said about wanting to get a tournament going. “It would be good for tennis in the whole county.” He added, “Maybe good for me.” His father smirked. David bent closer to his plate and ate quickly, then put his dish in the sink behind him.

“You wait a minute there,” Saul said. “Sit down.”

David stood behind his chair, his hand on the back of it. He gripped the wooden slat, and, for a moment, remembered the good feeling of the racket in his hand when he played a nice lob volley. His father would appreciate the surprise of a good shot, if he took the trouble to understand the game. “I thought I'd read a while,” he said. He noticed how tired his mother looked. He did not want to quarrel with his father in front of her.

“You've spent the whole summer out of the house!” Saul shouted. David was indignant. You'd think I was out catting around, he wanted to say. He slumped into his chair, and knocked over the beer bottle. It clanged and rolled across the floor a few feet to the stove, leaving a trickled trail of beer.

“Shit,” he mumbled.

“Never mind, son,” his mother said, reaching for a towel.

“Wipe it up!” his father thundered.

He grabbed the towel from his mother and got down on his knees to clean the mess. His face burned. He threw the towel at the door to his room, and sat back down sulkily.

“Well, summer's over now, isn't it?” his mother said with false cheerfulness. “We have to get used to one another again!”

Saul took a crust of bread and sopped up the last of his tomato sauce, leaning close to the plate to stuff it in his mouth. David and his mother watched him eat. He caught their stares, and laughed. “Nice meal, Mama,” he said.

“Davy made it,” Marge said.

“Good
boy.
” Saul leaned back in his chair and tipped it onto two legs, the way Marge often asked him not to do. “Lucky son of mine, to spend Labor Day playing tennis.”

“I work at it,” David said sullenly. He never understood why his father demeaned his every accomplishment. Was he not the same man who said, Stand up straight, Wear clean clothes, Speak clearly, Study hard? Did he not say, Every son's duty is to do better than his father? Did he not say, No son of mine is going to be an ORDERLY!

“Your partner went out too? Ellis?”

“He had to work with his dad.”

“Oh ho. To
labor?
”

“Am I supposed to understand something here!” David snapped.

“Davy, honey, be nice.” His mother pulled Saul's plate over onto hers and stacked the silverware on top.

“
Sir
,” said David.

“No holidays in the oil patch,” Saul snarled. Marge, who often reminded Saul that he knew absolutely nothing about oilfield work, rolled her eyes and got up to begin banging around dishes at the sink. Saul paid her no attention. “Union contracts would provide for holidays, with extra pay if you have to work. If any holiday ought to be honored, it's LABOR DAY. These desert jackasses think they're too independent and rowdy to be collected, even if it is for their own good.”

“Saul, really,” Marge said after all. Her father had been a rig builder, and David had grown up on stories about the trouble union organizers caused before the war. “You don't understand, it's not like other work, you live and die a boom and bust life.”