Jolly (14 page)

Later, after Babe’s gastronomical appetite was satisfied, and the fire had died to occasional pops and glows, Jolly sat with Dogie on one of the blankets, leaning against the furrowed brown trunk of a pine. He chatted foolishly about the forest, the town, the rain that still threatened—anything to keep her face turned toward his and away from Luke and Babe who lay on their blanket on the other side of the fire, their low-whispered talk interrupted only by Babe’s chuckles and periods of silence.

“Jolly,” Dogie said, stopping his flow of talk. “When are you going to kiss me?” Her eyes, wide and serious, watched his.

How do you figure a girl like this? Jolly opened his mouth and closed it, dumbly, like the goldfish in the plaza pond. He laughed shortly. This was the first time a girl had had to ask.

“I guess I do talk too much,” he said. “How about right now?” He bent to kiss her and felt her lips soft and immobile, inexperienced. He moved his lips experimentally against hers, and they remained soft, yet she did not pull back, and her eyes watched his, curiously.

“Thank you,” she said when he stopped.

He moved his arm farther down her shoulder and reached across the front of her waist and pulled her toward him and met her lips again. She moved to him easily but remained relaxed, unresponsive. Jolly drew back his head and studied her face. The gold flecks had brightened, if anything. She seemed to wait for his next move, to be told what she should do. Jolly rejected the exploratory thought that passed through his mind.

“Why are you smiling?”

The idea was ridiculous.

“No reason,” he said.

Not with this girl. Not with Dogie.

“Where are they going?”

Luke and Babe had picked up their blanket and were walking toward the car, she reaching back to tug at the band of her sweat shirt, he pulling down on his Levis pockets to ease the tightness that had ridden too high. At the car he held the rear door for her to enter then closed it after them.

“What are they going to do?”

Jolly thought, if you only knew. He said to her that Luke and Babe were probably tired of the lumpy ground or were cold or something. To change the subject he withdrew his arm from her shoulders and leaned forward on his knees to pitch more wood on the fire. He remained to watch the flames climb quickly over the dry pine wood, brightening the night as they cracked.

“I like a pine fire,” he said.

“What?”

He turned to her. “I said I like a pine fire. Don’t you?”

She watched him come back to her. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.” She leaned forward a few inches so his arm could encircle her shoulders again. Instead, he asked her if she wouldn’t like a pickle or a toasted marshmallow. A frown passed her face and she smiled, “OK,” she said and leaned back against the tree.

“OK which?”

“A toasted pickle,” she said, and her laugh stilled the night insects’ songs.

Jolly was relieved by her laugh and the orange light that mazurkaed in her hair. “Crazy,” he said.

All right, maybe. Jolly moved back from the fire again. Dogie’s eyes watched his even as he knelt and took her face in his two hands, pressing the orange light against her skin. Her lips began to mimic each inquest of his. Because her eyes still watched his, he moved his face so that it rested beside hers, by her neck. Whenever his arms pressured her she moved forward to him. He felt her back stiffen and shiver when his hand stopped over one breast, but because she did not remove it, the hand went on to the buttons of her blue plaid shirt.

It was then the storm broke. As happens in the high pine forests, it came with the first lightning as if someone had ripped a huge water-filled balloon and sent its contents down on everything thirsty below.

“No,” Jolly whispered and clenched Dogie to him, trying to wrap his whole self over her as if by shielding her from the rain it would see and cease.

The little fire hissed and sent up spurts of white smoke, but it was no match for the downpour and was extinguished by the time Jolly and Dogie—she shrieking, delighted—had gathered the blanket and box of food.

“We better get to the car!” he yelled, louder than was necessary for her to hear. He guided her to the front door and opened it, but not before they were drenched. “Quick!” His voice was urgent. He threw the box across the front seat and shoved her in. The inside lights of the car flared brightly.

Dogie stopped, one knee on the seat, the other foot on the ground. She stared into the back seat. “God,” thought Jolly. “Jesus God. They could’ve at least used the blanket.” He pushed against Dogie’s bottom and shoulder and sent her sprawling across the cardboard box on the other side of the seat. He slammed the door and waited.

“What the hell’s going on?” Luke said. He was plainly angry.

“It’s raining, idiot,” said Jolly. “We better get the hell outa here before the mud’s ass-deep.” Well, he wasn’t inclined right then to be cautious. He felt for the key in the ignition, found it, and started the engine. He raced it a few seconds before turning on the headlights. He put the car in reverse and leaned over the seat in order to back up onto the road. He tried to ignore the rearrangements being made in the back seat, now only faintly visible in the reflected light, and concentrated on backing the car.

Once on the road, he shifted to forward gear, and his eyes passed over Dogie. She sat low in the seat, looking straight ahead, her arms crossed over each other tightly. Jolly gave the road more attention than it needed and drove too fast so that the back of the car slewed on the curves.

“Take it easy, Joll,” Luke spoke calmly. “Take it easy.”

On the paved road Jolly relaxed some and lighted a cigarette. The cigarette was reason not to talk. Outside, the white streaks of lightning cracked over the forest, lighting the asphalt channel over which the car traveled and the border of trees that seemed to stretch upwards in delight toward the rain.

Jolly felt Dogie edge toward him, her arms still clasped about her body. “You scared?” he said and smiled down on her head. She moved the rest of the way to him and seemed to welcome his arm.

“A little,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The storm, I mean.”

He ignored the unnecessary added explanation and said, “We’ll have these sudden storms off and on all summer. They’re loud—”

“—and wet.”

“Yes, but they only last a little while. It’ll be over by the time we get home.”

“We’re going home?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “We’re going home.”

No one spoke more than to comment on the conditions of the weather until Jolly stopped the car on the road at the bottom of Dogie’s driveway. “We’ll have to walk,” he said. “The driveway’ll be too muddy.”

“OK,” she said and waited for him to open the door. Without looking toward them she called goodnight to Luke and Babe and stepped onto the road.

“Here. Take some of this stuff,” said Jolly.

“No. You keep it,” she said.

“What’ll I do with all this? You take it. Your mother—”

“I don’t want any of it!” she interrupted. She turned to walk away. Jolly ran to catch her hand. They slipped in the mud, and he pulled her up the driveway quickly because the rain had not stopped.

On her porch she faced him and said, “Goodnight, Jolly. I loved it.”

“Wait a minute, Dogie.” He reached his hand to brush back a strand of wet yellow hair from her face. She took his hand from her face and held it. Her eyes watched his in the light from the windows. He smiled and that seemed to be enough for her. He put his arms around her, but she averted his face in favor of his shoulder.

“Jolly?”

“Yes.”

“Jolly, they were making love, weren’t they?” she said.

He took longer to answer than is needed to say yes or no. He felt her back heave beneath his hands. He should not have pulled her up the steep muddy driveway so fast, he remembered. “I shouldn’t have pulled you so fast,” he said.

She said, “It doesn’t matter.” The bellows sound had started. She lifted her head. Her face wore a question. She waited.

He pushed her head back on his shoulder and said, “Yes.”

In a few minutes her breath came more naturally. She moved back from him and smiled, but the freckles didn’t chase across her face. “Goodnight, Jolly,” she said and opened the door of her house.

THE following morning Jolly awoke late and lay in bed even later. His last exam at school was not until the next day so there was very little he had to do better than stare at the low ceiling and wonder about the strange yellow-haired girl whom he had seen but twice—three times counting the morning in church. His mother had no objections to his lying late abed, because he had come in early the night before. He heard her puttering quietly about the house fulfilling her part of a tacit agreement that had always seemed backwards to him. At ten-thirty, no longer able to forestall a trip to the bathroom, he swung his legs off the bed and jammed them into his Levis.

Later he studied some, but
Silas Marner
yellowed like the old miser’s gold before his eyes, and the words came alive like freckles moving. He rejected the desire to phone, because you weren’t supposed to phone girls, that is, special girls, before noon.

He closed the book. “Mom. I think I’ll go down to school for a while.”

His mother came to the kitchen door, wiping flour from her hands on a cloth. “You have a test today?”

“No, but I need to clean out my locker and stuff.” He tied his shoelaces, sitting on the living room sofa.

“What about lunch? You need to eat some lunch.”

“I’ll eat somewhere, Mom. Don’t worry.”

“Lord a mercy, the kind a food you eat. I don’t know
when
you’ve had a square meal. Sometimes you don’t eat enough to shake a stick at. You’ll dry up and blow away.” She followed him into the bathroom and stood watching him comb his hair.

“OK, Mom, OK. I’m not exactly skin and bones.”

“You put too much water on your hair. It’ll all fall out someday, doing that. You ought to brush it.”

“Like Jamie, you mean? As I remember he brushed his, and it still fell out.”

His mother turned momentarily to view a pot of something on the stove. “Jamie’s hair is different. He has his father’s hair.”

“OK, Mother. Excuse me.” He moved past her, through the kitchen toward the bedroom. She followed.

“How was your picnic last night? You never said.”

“It was OK.” He took a shirt from his closet.

“You-all came home mighty early. Why’d you decide to come home so early? Didn’t you and her get along?”

“Mother,” he said, “don’t
quiz
me. It rained. And everything was fine. OK?”

She drew up stiffly. “You needn’t get on your high horse. You just never tell me anything. You could be dead and buried and I’d be the last to know. It’s a come-off.”

She withdrew to her pots and her pans, and Jolly buttoned his shirt, then stuffed his pockets with his change and wallet, his comb, and a clean handkerchief. “See you later,” he called and closed the front door.

In her kitchen Mattawilde Osment clucked her tongue and wondered what would finally become of that boy.

At school Jolly walked first into the gymnasium locker rooms and was greeted by the dirty socks-n’-jocks odor that had permeated the walls for so long that it never subsided, not even in the summer when the school was closed for three months. He took the lock off the handle, knowing he would never remember the combination by fall. His gym clothes he rolled in the stiff towel as neatly as possible and tied the laces of his tennis shoes together for easier carrying.

“Fingers!” A door slammed and big Guppy’s voice reverberated against the metal lockers and echoed through the tiled showers he loved so well. “How the hell?” he said.

“Hi, Guppy.” Jolly shut the door of his locker and turned. “You still around? I thought you’d be long gone by now.”

Guppy threw his meaty body down prone on a wooden bench. “Shit,” he said. “Coach called me and said I had ta clean out my friggin’ locker.”

Jolly opened his mouth to say something like “Me too,” but Guppy, well started, continued his diatribe. “Christ, what a night,” he said, flinging one huge arm over his eyes. “Me and the guys really laid one on.”

“You get drunk?”

“Drunk? That ain’t the
half
of it. I feel like a goddam punching bag or something. Jesus, I’ll be glad to get outa this friggin’ dump.” He sat up suddenly. “You know what old lady Kastner gimme in English, fer chrissake?”

“She pass you?”

“She gimme a four. A goddam
four.”
Guppy shook his head. “I shoulda got better’n a goddam four, don’t ya think? Christ, I taken that course three times.”

Jolly laughed. “Guppy, you ought to be glad she passed you at all. She probably only did so she wouldn’t have to see your ugly face again next year.”

Guppy looked up at Jolly to better decide the nature of his comment. Satisfied, he studied his hands hanging limply between his knees. “Ah, screw her,” he said and thus closed the subject.

“You’re going to graduate tonight, aren’t you?”

Guppy grinned. “You bet your sweet ass I am. Hey! You can’t smoke in here! This is the
locker
room, fer chrissake.”

“I can’t think of a better place.”

“What if they catch you?” Guppy’s face hung in honest concern.

“Maybe they’ll bar me from this damn gym forever. That would be about the greatest injustice known to man.”

“You’re some kind of a nut,” said Guppy. “Hey! Know what me and the guys’re gonna do tomorra night to celebrate?”

“No. What.”

“We’re gonna shagg ass to Nogie.”

“Nogales?”

“Yeh, man! First I’m gonna get me about a dozen beers, and then I’m gonna plunk down my three dollars and get me the biggest, fattest, hottest piece a tail on Canal Street.” Guppy flopped back on the bench and yelped.

Jolly flicked the ash from his cigarette on the floor and spread it with his shoe. “Who’s going with you?” he asked.

“Hell, I don’t know. Burgess and Culp, I guess. And Skinny if his old lady’ll let him outa her sight.” He sat up again. “And then ya know what I’m gonna do, Fingers?”