Jolly (19 page)

Mrs. Van Dearen opened the door, and her eyes passed down from his hair, wet and bedraggled, over his rough clothes. “Yes?”

“Hello. Is—I was just walking by, and I got caught in the rain,” he chanted. “That is, I
like
to walk in the rain and all, but—is Dogie here?” he finished.

The woman did not step back or ask him in. “She’s sick.”

“I know. I mean, that’s part of the reason I stopped by. To see how she is.”

“Are you Luke? Are you the one she was with last night?”

Jolly smiled. “No, ma’am. I’m Jolly. The watercress and stuff.”

Mrs. Van Dearen relaxed her hold on the door somewhat. “She’s sick,” she said again. “But I guess you can talk for a minute.”

“I’ll just stay out here, if it’s OK with you. My shoes are muddy and everything.”

She considered for a moment. Then she said, “All right. She can come out—but only for a minute—if she wraps up.” She closed the door.

Jolly leaned on the porch railing, his hands in his pockets, and watched the closed door. In a few moments it opened again.

There she was.

There she was, her face peering out from under a red and black Navajo blanket that she held tightly to her, the end dragging behind. She lifted one arm, palm outward, and said “How!”

Jolly laughed. “Hello, crazy.”

She let the blanket drop from around her head and shook the yellow hair so that it fell, rumpled, about her shoulders. “Hello, Jolly.”

“Hi. How’re you feeling? Your mom said you were real sick.”

“Mother worries too much.” She looked past him to the wet forest. “Isn’t this beautiful?” she said.

“This rain?”

“Yes.”

“Most people would say this is a pretty dull day.”

“It’s not. It’s a wonderful day. I wish I could just walk and walk on a day like this, don’t you?” She didn’t know that walking in the rain was precisely what he had been doing. She came to stand beside him and leaned over the porch rail. Jolly saw the blue spot at her temple, like a patch of sky seen through thin clouds.

“I’ve
been
walking. How do you think I got here?”

She turned to him as if seeing him for the first time. “You are wet, aren’t you. You’ll catch cold and have to go around in an Indian blanket,” she said, but she didn’t smile. “What are you looking at?”

“Your eyes,” he said. “The gold flecks—”

“The what?”

“The gold
flecks.
They’re gone.”

She faced the woods again. “Are they?” she said and fell silent.

“Dogie, I’d like to take you out again. I’d like to go somewhere with you.”

“No, Jolly.” She lifted her chin and drew in a deep breath. The bellows sound rasped. “Besides, I don’t think Mother will let me out for a while.”

“You were with Luke again last night, weren’t you.”

“Yes. Yes. Why do you look at me like that? I went out with Luke last night and the night before—and, who knows? I might again.” She smiled to herself.

“What’s Luke got—I mean, what’s so much better about Luke than me?”

“Nothing, Jolly. Nothing.”

“Then why?”

“Can’t we drop it?” she asked.

“No. I think I ought to know. I took you out first. I found you. You wanted to go to a wiener roast and I took you. And Dogie, I’d take you anywhere else you wanted to go.”

She drew the blanket tighter over her shoulders, her hands crossed over her chest. “I know, Jolly. And I appreciate it—”

“Appreciate it! Look, a guy doesn’t just—well, I mean, I’m not asking for appreciation, for God’s sake.” He turned away angrily. “I just don’t see why Luke’s so much better than I am.”

“It isn’t that, I’m trying to tell you,” she said, and her voice was nearly lost in the rain.

“Well, what, then? Just tell me.” He faced her again and touched her shoulder. “Just tell me and I’ll stop pestering you.”

Her eyes lifted to meet his, and he noticed for the first time the dark smudges that hadn’t been under her eyes four nights ago. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you if you promise not—”

“Of course. What are you talking about?”

“Luke made love to me,” she said.

“What do you mean, he made love to you?”

“I mean just that. The night before last. And last night.”

Jolly stopped his tirade. He looked all over her face on which the freckles stood out against the flesh, over her hair the color of April laburnums, over her hands that held the blanket closely. He swallowed once and said, “Do you mean like—well, like Luke and Babe Wooten?” His mouth remained open, waiting.

She smiled, and some of the light returned to her eyes. “Yes, Jolly. Just like Babe Wooten.”

“Son of a bitch, “he said.

She watched him curiously. “How old are you, Jolly? Never mind, I know how old you are.”

“I’m the same as him.”

“No, you’re not. Even if you are, you’re not. And I’m eighteen. Does that surprise you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s because I’m little and have these idiot freckles.” She breathed deeply again. “Eighteen years on that god-forsaken ranch with nothing but asthma and white-faced cows.”

Jolly said nothing. His mind tumbled over firelight, and April laburnums and red fringes and a sunlit pond and a bare brown belly and a grinning boy with a shock of straight black hair.

“I’d better go in, Jolly,” she was saying. “Jolly?”

“What?”

“I said I’m going in.”

“OK.” He walked to the top step of the porch. “OK, Dogie. So long.”

He walked a long way through the pine woods, the rain soaking his clothes, until he reached the paved road. From the sanctuary of the trees he looked out upon the paved road that led, in one direction, toward town. The rain made the asphalt blacker and made it shine with polish. When a car traveled over the road its tires sucked away the polish and sent it spraying. As soon as the car was gone the rain began its patient re-surfacing of the tracks. Except for the occasional cars there was nothing to break the steady, shy sound of the rain that with each drop cleaned the pines and the years-deep rug of pine needles and the dwarf oaks. The air itself grew lighter, lifting the odors of the woods, sweeping the smell of burning fireplaces through the trees. In the ditches the Indian paintbrush raged red and defiant beside clumps of white daisies whose myriad heads salaamed in turn to the god rain.

Sheltered by the umbrella of a great pine, Jolly attempted to light a cigarette with matches grown soggy in his pocket. He deliberately struck each match on the little sandpaper strip until the pink heads had all been rubbed away. None of them would light. The cigarette had become wet, also, from being held between his lips too long, so he dropped it to the ground along with the matches. He leaned against the rough bark and waited. He was not waiting for the rain to stop. He was not waiting for darkness. If you had chanced upon him there, his hands shoved into his pants pockets and with his collar turned stiffly against the rain, and asked him why he waited, he would have been unable to tell you. As long as he stayed within the woods there were no complications. A man’s (and likely a boy’s) thoughts are his own in the forest. He can think whatever or wherever his mind will let him. And there is nothing to which he must give account for the things he thinks of or the things he does. Certainly the pines do not care. He may stand there, and welcome. But once he stands on a paved road he has to go somewhere, because a paved road was meant to go somewhere. If he chooses to walk the paved road he will come to people, eventually, because that is the somewhere a paved road goes.

He did not shiver until he saw the orange square of light appear across the road, deep among the trees. Some woman had begun to stir in her kitchen, preparing dinner. For a moment it seemed that the day was going backwards, or that a whole night had disappeared while he stood there, and this was a new morning in the making.

He slid down the short muddy bank part way, then leaped onto the pavement and stamped the mud from his shoes. He crossed to the left side of the road more for obscurity than for safety, and he hunched against the chill rain as he headed toward town.

He did not know what he would say to Luke. The realization that he wasn’t angry had come a long time back, but he hadn’t tried to reason that out. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all about Dogie. She seemed to be far away, wrapped in the woods and her Indian blanket. Jolly stopped absent-mindedly in the rain. It was Luke’s face, not Dogie’s, that appeared in his mind. It was the dark-skinned face, not the freckled one, the slow grin, not the head thrown back in laughter, the straight black hair, not the yellow that appeared. It was Luke he wanted to see.

Jolly turned back on the road in the direction of home. His clothes were cold against his skin and wet. Gloaming came early on afternoons of rain when the setting sun, obscured, could not reflect its light from the eastern hills. His mother would have supper ready to serve already, he knew, because the evening meal was always served as night fell, not by the clock.

The car’s lights picked and blinked over the wet trees and then the pavement before Jolly heard it. He stepped to the muddy bank and continued to walk without looking back. Just as the wet kiss of the tires was audible he recognized the valiant, cardiographic pump of the Blue Goose’s engine. He stopped and watched the car approach.

“Hey, Joll.” The car door swung open.

“Hey, Luke.” Jolly slid onto the seat.

“Where the hell you been? I been callin’ you for about ten hours.”

“You know where I’ve been.”

“You seen Dogie?” Luke asked. He watched the road.

“Yeh, I saw her. You got any goddam dry matches?”

“No.”

“Figures. What are you doing?”

“Turning around. We got a body to pick up.”

“No,” Jolly said. “I don’t want to. I’m going home.”

“Ah, jeez, Joll. It won’t take long.” Luke stopped the car cross-wise in the road and waited. “I’ll need some help.”

“Where is it?”

“County.”

“There’s lots of people to help out there.” Jolly turned his face toward the right-hand window. “You gonna take me home? Because if you aren’t, I’ll get to walking again.”

Luke grumbled and began to turn the car back the way it was first headed. “Yeh, I’ll take you home. Jesus H.”

They rode without talking for a while until Jolly faced Luke again and blurted, “Goddam you, Luke.”

“Well, hell, Joll. You had your chance to—”

“You call that a chance?” Jolly’s voice climbed high above the wet sounds of the car. “You call that a goddam
chance?
Right in the middle of a stinkin’ cloudburst?”

Luke’s voice was patient. “I told you, Joll, you gotta keep—”

“Yeh, I know. I know what you told me. Christ, a guy’d have to stay up all day
and
night to get anywhere before you.” Jolly watched the car’s lights swing over the top of the hill that led to his street.

“You gonna shut up a friggin’ minute?” Luke asked. “Listen, I didn’t really expect no—I didn’t think she would the first night, fer chrissake.” Luke wanted to talk about it. “Jeez, I never saw nobody as ready as—well, goddamit, Jolly, you
could
have! Anybody could have.”

“Can’t you ever see anything? Can’t you ever see anything, or know anydamnthing?”

Luke stopped the car at Jolly’s house. “You ain’t makin’ much sense. Know what? You act like you was saving her, or something.”

“Maybe I was,” Jolly said quietly, his face to the window again.

“What?”

“Nothing.” The two boys were silent for a time, each watching the rain splash and spread on the glass. “Forget it. I don’t give a rat’s ass. Screw her all you want to. And screw you, too.” Jolly breathed deeply and sat up straight, his hand on the door handle.

“You comin’ with me?” Luke asked.

“No. I’m going to get out of these goddam wet clothes and eat something.”

Luke laughed.

“All right, garbage-mind,” Jolly grinned. “What’re we going to do tonight?”

“I don’t know. What d’you wanta do?”

“I don’t know.” Jolly opened the door and stood out into the rain. “I’ll walk down in a couple of hours. Will you be through by then—with the body and all?”

“I’ll come get you, Jolly. You’ll be all wet again,” Luke said.

“No. No, I’ll wear my idiot raincoat.” Jolly shut the car door and stood with his hands in his pockets while the Blue Goose spun wildly away into the wet street.

JOLLY slammed the back door and stood scraping the soles of his shoes on the square of carpeting that lay for that purpose on the worn linoleum. “Mom?”

“In here,” she answered from the living room. “Come see who I got.”

He walked into the other room. “What in hell—in the world is that?” he asked.

There in the middle of the floor, seated on a folded quilt, sat a little boy playing with a hairbrush and some blocks. He looked up at the sound of Jolly’s voice and laughed. Beside him in her rocker, her attention bent protectively toward him, sat Jolly’s mother, beaming, but trying not to show it.

“ Where’d you get
him?”
Jolly asked. The little boy laughed.

“Isn’t he cute?” She bent down from the rocker to retrieve a flung block. “The spittin’ image of your father.”

Jolly stood dripping wet. “What are you talking about, Mother? Whose is he? Where’d you get him?”

Mattawilde leaned back in her rocker and watched the boy. “That black hair,” she said. “And those eyes.”

“Mother.”

“He’s Jamie’s,” she said, and her eyes flicked to Jolly’s face for a moment.

“Jamie’s! How do you know? Where’d he come from? Jamie’s and who else’s? He didn’t tell me he was
married,
for crap’s sake.”

His mother rocked and watched the baby pound one block on another. “Those were Jamie’s blocks,” she said. Then she said, “Well, he isn’t married. But he’s about to be,” she added quickly. “And you needn’t tell anybody different.”

Jolly sat on the sofa and then stood again and moved to a wooden chair that his wetness would not harm. “Jeez, I don’t know what you’re even talking about.”

Jolly kicked a stray block gently back toward the edge of the quilt. “Who’s the mother? And how’d he get hold of this baby if he’s not married? And how did
you
get hold of it, in the first place?”