Jolly (7 page)

“Yeh. Over there.” He indicated a wide serve-through opening from the kitchen. “They’ve probably got Cokes and all.” She began to lead him across the floor, but he tugged back on her hand.

“Di,” he said. “Wait. Wait a minute.’

She turned to face him. “What’s the matter with your voice?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Let’s go outside awhile.”

“Outside?”

“Yes. To the car. You want to go to the car awhile?” He began to pull her hand toward him.

Di did not move. She plucked at Jolly’s arm with her other hand and said “Jolly?” in an incredible, little voice. He saw that her eyes had grown wide and stared past him, over his shoulder.

Jolly turned. There behind him stood a young man who had been watching the back of his neck, evidently, but who now shifted his eyes darkly to meet Jolly’s. Held slightly before him in one hand, the blade just resting on the other palm, was a knife glinting bluely against his flowered shirt.

Jolly’s gaze dropped to the knife and then back quickly to the lips curled over a hand-rolled cigarette, then on to the man’s eyes, one of which squinted against the smoke.

“Bill!” Jolly exploded. “Bill Kemp!”

“H’lo, you little bastard. Thought it uz you.” The man’s lips smiled on the side opposite the cigarette. “I’m still gonna cut off yer goddam ears.” He brandished the knife.

Jolly laughed. “You scared the crap outta me, Bill. What are you still doing around here, anyway?”

“Waitin’ to cut off yer goddam ears.” The young man’s eyes flicked sideways to Di, then slid down her and back to Jolly. “Er maybe you ready to have somethin’ else cut off by now.” Jolly could smell the whiskey on his breath.

“Bill, this is Diane Carson. Bill’s been threatening to cut off my ears for the last ten years since I surprised him and a heifer in his dad’s barn one day.”

“Never mind, Osment, never you mind,” spoke Bill Kemp quietly. His eyes traced Di’s body insolently. “I tell ya what, Osment, you little sonuvabitch. I won’t never cut off yer goddam ears ner nothin’ else if ya let me have at it with yer lady this dance.” He smiled at Jolly. “Course it won’t make no difference if ya let me ’r not, ya know.”

Jolly reached for Di’s hand again. “How about a little later, Bill. Di and I were just going out for a—for a while. A beer,” he stammered.

Bill Kemp did not say anything. Neither did Di. They only watched each other.

“Come on, Di,” Jolly said. He felt her slipping away even before her hand did. “We could just have a beer.” He knew the back of his neck was turning red. “Dammit, Bill,” he said, “Goddamit!”

Bill’s eyes never left Di’s, but his right arm swung up a little, an almost imperceptible bit, and from his hand the knife blade caught dull light and winked.

Jolly felt Di’s hand pull from his. She moved into Bill’s arms as if she had danced with him all her life. Or had been practicing for the occasion. Jolly walked to the wall and squatted there and lit a cigarette. He saw Di’s green skirt disappear into the crowd beside Bill’s long, blue-fitted legs.

Bill Kemp must be about twenty-two or twenty-three, Jolly figured. It was a wonder he remained in Skull Valley, but then people had said Bill Kemp would never amount to anything—the Kemps never did. After the day Jolly came upon Bill in the act of attempted sodomy with the heifer, they became friends of a sort—at least Bill took time to pull out his knife and joke with Jolly at the Saturday night dances—and that same afternoon, Bill, at that time twice his age, introduced Jolly to the mystery of masturbation, an act beyond the power of the seven-year-old, but it provided information that, stored away, was of use five years later.

A pair of pillar legs hove into Jolly line of vision and stopped, thigh-level with his face. Before looking upward his eyes were drawn down the meshed legs to where they overhung white comfort oxfords. “Mrs. Arney!” he said, before seeing her face. He dropped his cigarette on the floor and stood.

“Jolly Osment, I declare. I thought ’twas you a-settin’ there like a blessed injun.” Mrs. Arney’s wide face broke in all directions.

“Hello, Mrs. Arney. Yes, it’s me.”

“Well, I declare. How you’ve growed! Last time I seen you you weren’t taller’n a minute.” Her body shook in gargantuan merriment.

“Yes, ma’am. I guess I have grown some.”

“Still a-goin’ to Sunday School?” Mrs. Arney had commandeered all the boys and girls of the valley above the age of four for twenty-five years. “Ours is still a-goin’ strong.” She raced up and down the valley every Sunday morning in her ancient school bus gathering in her flock.

“Yes’m. I still go some—to church.” Jolly glanced beyond her at the whirling colors.

Her bosom began shaking before the laugh sounded in her throat. “That’s a blessin’ truly. Like I was sayin’ to the Lord the other night—how’s Mattawilde?”

“What? Oh, Mother. She’s fine, thanks. She—”

“Like I was sayin’ to the Lord the other night, maybe He got caught up on His rest on Sundays, but I swan if some a His shepherds—I like to think of myself as a shepherd, which ain’t so far wrong, ya know—I got more’n a thousand head a Angoras yet—some a His shepherds have to work a deal harder on Sunday than any other. Takes more persuadin’ ever year to get these young rascals out come Sunday mornin’.”

“You’re looking fine, Mrs. Arney. You been well?” Jolly asked and immediately felt ridiculous.

“A-man. Anybody kin see I’m still as fat and healthy as I ever been, and I intend to remain this a-way, the Lord willin’ in His mercy.” Her great arms akimbo, she partially turned to scrutinize the crowd. “That’s what I’m a-doin’ here, tonight. Somebody gotta keep a eye on these here youngsters and send ’em home or they ain’t never goin’ to make it ta Sunday School in the morning.”

“I guess it is sort of late—for these little kids,” Jolly offered.

“I say a-man to that, son. It’s pert’ nearly eleven o’clock in the night. Well, I reckon I oughta see if I cain’t drop a few hints about the time a night. It’s a mercy anybody makes it ta Sunday School any more. However, as you remember from your lessons, Jolly Osment, the Lord worketh in mysterious ways.” She lifted a hand in salute and moved away laboriously, her laugh rollicking above the din, leaving Jolly to ponder the applicability of her final remark.

Jolly subconsciously heard the music reach a tonic chord and stop, raggedly. A long, shrill cry broke from somewhere among the heated pack, rose to an insane pitch, suspended and then was cut short with a sharp upward yelp. The cry was repeated once or twice from diverse sides of the room. The cowboy’s yell, it was used equally to drive cattle, to replace the city wolf-whistle, or as an inexplicable and carefree expression of whiskeyed joy.

While the band recessed, most of the elderly couples and little children crowded about the refreshment counter. Jolly walked away toward the doors where the stags and young couples moved out into the cooler night air, dispersed along the porch and stairs, and out among the parked cars where their presence was signaled by red dots of fire from cigarettes.

“Well, horse-patookus. Where ya been?” Luke and Babe strolled up hot and disheveled from dancing. “Where’s Di?”

“Oh, she’s in the can, I think.”

“Who’s that she was with?” asked Babe.

“Where?”

“On the dance floor.”

Jolly affected a grin. “Oh, he’s an old friend of mine. Bill Kemp.” He laughed shortly. “I let him dance with her for a minute.”

Babe winked at Luke. “If you call that
dancing,
what they were doing.” She squeezed Luke’s hand, and his arm went about her waist.

“Well, old buddy, we’re going to the car for a little something.” Luke slapped Jolly on the shoulder. “Beer, that is,” he grinned.

“OK. See you.” Jolly watched them move through the knot of people on the steps. They walked arm in arm down a path between the cars, then cut to the side, toward the limousine, and out of sight. Jolly wondered fleetingly how Luke always managed so well with the girls. There was something about him that attracted and held them, but no one could have said what it was.

When the red dots of light began to arch briefly in the parking lot, and the dancers began to drift, rested and cooled, back into the hall, Jolly moved in with them.

“You got a stamp?”

“Oh, yeh. Here.” He showed his hand with the purple clover.

He stood against the wall a little way from the doors and watched the dancers bunch and spread, their feet nervous on the floor. Old Cab Coon stumped by unsteadily, on his way to the band stand. As he approached, his colorless eyes, the skin pulled down in wet folds beneath them, passed over Jolly. “You bin a-goin’ to church, son?” he cracked.

Jolly straightened from the wall in surprise. “Oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir. You?”

“You do the church-goin’, son, and I’ll do the whiskey-drinkin’.” The old man wheezed past without changing his gait, intent on reaching the band stand where his wife glowered, awaiting his return.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jolly laughed. “The old goat remembered me!” Pleased, he followed the old man’s progress until he stood erect on the band stand and raised his indomitable fiddle—not to his chin, but about midway on his chest. Mrs. Decker lifted her long black skirts and stepped onto the platform. With her handkerchief she dusted the piano stool, gave it a shake and sat on it, prepared to play her three-chord repertoire (in any key, in any octave) for another hour until the next intermission.

Mrs. Coon grasped the microphone, a superfluity, and announced: “Form up, folks. We’re a-gonna do ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ for the kiddies ’fore they gotta go home.”

The young children scrambled wildly about the dance hall capturing and bartering partners until all were at least partially content with their mates. The adults moved with affected casualness among the children.

To Jolly the scene had not changed, really, in eight years. He rolled the back of his head against the polished boards of the wall. He saw the anticipation of one small boy who, wide-eyed, awaited the start of the music, oblivious of the denim-frocked girl whose hand he held from the greatest possible distance…

All around the mulberry bush

The ’possum chased the weasel

and who chewed her lip in concentration in order to better execute her skips and bobs. Mulberry bush: mulberry tree, it should be, down near the swamp, halfway to the McGowan’s chicken ranch. Purple rain from shook limbs. Purple hands in galvanized buckets. Purple toes until September. Purple steaming from slatted crusts before the lamps were lighted.

Pop! goes the weasel

A funny song—funny to the West. It had traveled in consort with “Turkey in the Straw” from somewhere among distant mountains and found a compatible transplant here in the valley named from death. Funny. There had never been a ’possum nor a weasel in Skull Valley so far as anyone knew.

The tow-headed boy stamped by, breathlessly intent lest he miss the signal to pop through the opening again. His alien oxfords, dust-covered and not a little scuffed about the toes, lifted unnaturally high at each step.

“What in hell they doin’ now?” asked Luke suddenly at Jolly’s side, his arm monopolizing Babe’s shoulders.

“It’s just a play-party dance,” Jolly answered and continued to roll the back of his head against the wall, gently.

“God. That’d kill me, sure,” said Babe.

“You seen Di?” Luke asked.

“Nope.” He faced Luke briefly as his head rolled that way. “And wipe that goddam lipstick off your face.”

“Jolly?”

“Yeh, Luke.”

“You ready to cut out?”

Jolly watched the little girl in the denim frock skip by pinkly. “No matter to me. You?” He continued to roll his head over the crack between two boards.

“Well, you coming?” Luke was anxious.

“In a minute. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Luke and Babe disappeared through the door. Jolly let himself drift with the raucous music as it beat through the heat and whirring color of the room.

When the dance ended Jolly pushed from the wall with his shoulders. As he was about to leave, past the woman with the clover stamp, Di’s voice spoke from behind him. “Jolly?”

Bill Kemp stood to one side and a little behind her. “Jolly?” Her bare shoulders and chest were damp and reflected the yellow light and changed it to glimpses of green and red. Her breath was short, perhaps from dancing.

“You ready to leave?” Jolly asked, reaching for her arm. Bill Kemp touched her other arm at the elbow, and she moved back a step.

“I’m going home with him,” she said. She brushed a damp strand of hair back on her temple. “I’m sorry, Jolly—”

“But, Di. Look, we—” Jolly watched Bill Kemp’s arm contract, drawing Di closer to him without moving himself forward at all. The thumb of his other hand was hooked into the front pocket of his Levis, the fingers splayed down in a token gesture of concealment.

“No,” she said. “You don’t know, Jolly. You just don’t.” For the first time, Di Carson looked cowed. She ducked her eyes and turned her face half toward Bill Kemp. As he pushed her past, he eyed Jolly from beneath his low-creased hat and winked. Jolly watched them cross the porch and go down the steps among the rows of parked cars and muddy pickup trucks.

“Bitch!” Jolly said, and the woman with the clover stamp looked up, startled. She said nothing, but she watched the boy who was vaguely familiar as he hung against a porch post a moment and then strode off into the dark.

He opened the door of the limousine and slid into the driver’s seat.

“You ever find Di?” Babe asked from the back seat.

“Yeh, I found her.” Jolly backed the car through a narrow space in the lot.

“Well?”

The lights picked out the gate, and he pointed the car that way.

“You just gonna
leave
without her?”

“She’ll get home.”

“God, she’d better,” said Babe. “I’m stayin’ at her house tonight. Her folks is outa town.”

“If you’re locked out, baby, I’ll find you a bed,” said Luke.

“Hm?” was the last sound Babe made for a while.

Jolly headed the car down the dirt road toward the opposite end of the valley from which they had entered. He drove slowly for nearly a mile, not seeing the doll-house yellow and red Santa Fe depot as he passed nor hearing the two great engines letting off excess steam from beneath their black bellies as they took water in turn from the crazy funnel that swung out on its elbow over the tracks, fifty feet from the road. He turned into a long lane darkened by interlocking cottonwood limbs. At the end of the lane he stopped the car, left the engine running, and got out to open a wood and barbed wire gate that creaked back against the fence and opened the way down the embankment to the creek bed. Jolly studied the crossing and the road reaching up the opposite bank as best he could in the beam from the car’s lights. Satisfied, he walked back to the car and drove cautiously across the sand until almost to the farther bank where he stepped hard on the accelerator and bit his underlip until the heavy city car heaved up and over, its underside scraping the top edge of the bank.