Summer Of Fear (4 page)

“Maybe she hasn’t been around any.”

“That might be it,” I acknowledged. “Living at boarding school so much of the time, she wouldn’t have had much chance to have pets, would she? Are you rehearsing tonight?”

“Nope,” Pete said. “We don’t have any engagements coming up till the dance at the club. Why?”

“I’ve got a date tonight,” I said, “but I felt funny about going out and leaving Julia on her first night here. If you’re going to be home, you can entertain her.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Pete said. He laid down his spoon with such force that it clattered against the side of the bowl. “Do you mean you’re planning to stick me with making conversation with some homely female cousin all evening while you’re sliding out from under? Where are you going anyway?”

“To a show, and we’re taking Bobby.”

“Well, take her too, then.”

“I offered,” I said self-righteously, “and she doesn’t want to go.” I knew what was behind his reaction. Pete pretended he didn’t like girls, but in actuality he was painfully shy with them.

“You might as well get to know her,” I told him. “After all, she’s going to be living here.”

Before he could object any further I went on through the swinging door into the den and turned on the television. Pretty soon Bobby came in, smelling like old tennis shoes and chewing gum, which was the way Bobby usually smelled on summer afternoons, and lay down on the floor, and we watched the Lucy show together until Mother got home from the store and it was time to help her fix dinner.

It seemed funny that night to see the table set with six places instead of five and to know that it would be that way every night from then on. Bobby got to the table first, as usual, and was sent back to wash the backsides of his hands. Peter went to bring in an extra chair from the kitchen, and I went upstairs to get Julia.

I rapped and said, “Dinner!” and Julia answered, “All right. I’m coming,” so I went back down to the others and we waited.

We waited and waited, and finally Mother put the chops back into the oven to keep them warm and Dad said, “Are you sure she heard you?”

“She answered,” I said. “She said she was coming.”

“Girls,” Bobby grumbled. “They’re never on time for anything.”

“At least, they wash the backs of their hands,” I told him.

“So, you don’t eat with the backs of your hands, do you?” Bobby countered.

“It’s the backs that the other people at the table have to look at,” Dad said, and they went into the usual routine which we all heard at least twice a week. When it was over Julia was still not down and the chops were beginning to smell as though they were burning.

“Maybe I’d better go up and check on her,” Mother began. “She could have dozed back off—”

And then she was there, standing in the doorway. Julia.

I knew then why it had taken her so long. Julia had dressed for dinner. The dress she had chosen was pale yellow with a long, swirling skirt and bell sleeves. It was a lovely dress, a strangely familiar dress. I had an immediate feeling that I had seen one like it recently on someone else, someone it had looked really good on.

But it wasn’t good on Julia. It seemed to hang wrong with the shoulder seams not quite in the right place so that her wrists extended too far below the end of the sleeves. It was tight across the chest, too, and the color was wrong. Julia was too sallow to wear that pale, butterfly shade of yellow.

But Mother got up and hugged her and said, “Honey, you look lovely,” and Dad smiled and said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a girl at this table wearing anything but blue jeans. Have you met your cousins, Pete and Bobby?”

The boys grunted greetings, and Julia said something appropriate. Then everybody sat down and Mother went out and got the chops and we had dinner.

What did we talk about at that dinner? I’m trying to remember. Just ordinary things, I guess. Mother had found a letter waiting for her from a magazine that wanted a picture of young people playing on sleds. “Didn’t we take some last winter?” she mused: “I’ll have to check my negative file. Magazines buy half a year ahead, Julia, so the calls for winter pictures come in the summer.” Dad remarked on some items in the evening paper. “Professor Jams is certainly staying active in his retirement. I see where he’s giving one of his occult lectures at the University Women’s Club.” Bobby wanted to know if he could get a new grass-catcher for the lawn mower.

I contributed the story of Trickle’s strange performance.

“I’ve never heard him growl before,” I said. “I wonder if he’s feeling bad or something.”

“Maybe he’s been eating grass,” Bobby suggested. “That makes dogs sick.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I told him. “Dogs eat grass because they’re sick. It makes them better.”

Julia didn’t often enter the conversation, but she listened. Her eyes went from one of us to another, studying our faces as she took in our words.

It wasn’t until Peter dropped his fork that she spoke up abruptly.

“Somebody’s coming.”

“What?” Peter said, startled.

“Oh—nothing.” Julia looked embarrassed. “It’s Just something the hill people say. A pussy superstition.”

“How interesting!” Mother exclaimed. “I imagine you heard about all sorts of fascinating superstitions, living in that area of the Ozarks. Or were you there long enough to be exposed to them?”

“I heard them from my folks,” Julia said. “They talked about them a lot. My father wanted atmosphere in his book. That’s why they hired Sarah from the village. They used her to learn how the jakey folks talked.”

“You make it sound like a foreign country,” Peter said, interested despite himself.

“It was,” Julia said. “Anyway, the parts where we were seemed that way. It’s like nothing there has changed in a thousand years. People get born there and live their whole lives there just like their foreparents. Their idea of a trip to the big city is going into Pine Crest on Saturdays. You try to tell them there’s a whole big world on the other side of the mountains, and they look at you like you’re crazy.”

“Your father must have liked it there,” Dad inserted gently. “After all, he chose to live there.”

“But not forever,” Julia said. “Just long enough to write his book. He’d have been done with it by summer. We were coming back then—this very summer, along about August—”

She let the sentence fall away, too painful to continue. We all shifted uncomfortably in a sudden search for a new direction in which to turn the conversation.

I grabbed at an old, reliable subject.

“What did you do on dates? Were there movies or bowling alleys or anything?”

“Nothing,” Julia said. “Folks just sat and talked. That was courting. And if a girl wasn’t married by eighteen she was an old maid for sure. Sarah was twenty-two, and you should of heard the things people’d say about her—that she was stuck-up and thought she was too good for any local fellows and waiting for a prince to come riding in and carry her off somewhere. After she came to work for us they wouldn’t hardly talk to her. Not that she cared, of course.”

“Did you have a backwoods boyfriend?” Peter asked her. It was such an unbelievable question to come from. Peter that we all turned to him in amazement. He avoided our eyes, keeping his trained on Julia.

“No. Not really.”

“Not really? Or not any?”

“The boys there weren’t my type,” Julia said. “When I pick somebody he’ll be ambitious. A college man, maybe.”

She raised her eyes to meet his, and a deep flush began to rise in Peter’s face. He dropped his own gaze to his plate and began fumbling around trying to put butter on a slice of bread he had already buttered.

“Can I have some more potatoes?” Bobby asked.

“How did the car run while we were away?” Dad asked Peter. “Were you still getting that chirping sound in the engine?”

The conversation was channeled off into other directions, and Julia slipped from it as easily as she had entered. When I look back I think that was the only real talking she did throughout the meal.

Bobby and I were clearing the table when the doorbell rang.

“That will be Mike,” I said. “We’re going to an early movie. Do you want to come with us, Bob? I forgot to ask earlier.”

“Are you kidding?” Bobby asked incredulously. “With ‘Kung Fu’ on television?”

“I hope you’re not planning to go out in those blue jeans,” Mother said. “They have holes in the knees.”

“They’re my favorite jeans!” I protested. “I’ve just got them broken in!”

The bell rang again and I went to answer it. I let Mike in and went up to change clothes, because even though I was in the right and the jeans were perfectly appropriate for movie going, it wasn’t worth the hassle of making an issue of the fact.

When I reached my room I saw Julia had started to unpack. Her suitcase stood open and the contents had been shoved about as though she had hurriedly dug through her things in order to locate the yellow dress. As I passed the case my foot struck something and sent it rolling across the floor. I bent to pick it up and discovered it was a small jar that looked as though it might contain some sort of cosmetic, although it did not have a label.

Curious, I unscrewed the top and saw that it held some sort of yellowish powder. It had an odd smell and I capped it again quickly, deciding then and there that one thing I wouldn’t do with Julia was borrow her makeup. I stuck the jar back into the case, from which it had evidently fallen, and continued across the room to the closet.

When I went back downstairs Mike was sitting in the living room with the family, telling them about a job he had just been offered as lifeguard at the Coronado Club pool.

“I had my name on the list since last fall,” he said, “but I never expected to get it, not with every other guy in town applying. But this afternoon they called and said it’s mine if I want it. If I want if—wow! The perfect summer job!”

“What about your lawn jobs?” I asked him. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing Professor Jarvis’s yard every week?”

“I’ll pass that to Bobby. The professor doesn’t care who does it as long as it gets done.” He got to his feet. “We’d better get going or well miss the start. It’s good to have you folks home again. It was nice meeting you, Julia. I live nest door so you’ll have to get used to having me around.”

“Thank you,” Julia said politely, and Mike and I left.

“Well, what did you think of her?” I asked when we were in the car.

“I didn’t think anything. I hardly saw her.” Mike turned the key in the ignition. “What do you think?”

“She’s not what I expected,” I said. “She’s sort of strange. She has an odd way of talking—when she talks. Which isn’t much. She uses funny words—’pussy’ and ‘jakey’ and things like that. Slang, I guess, but not like the kind we use around here.”

“What did you expect?” Mike asked. “She’s from another part of the country. She probably thinks we’re the ones who talk funny.”

“But she only spent summers in the Ozarks,” I said. “She went to school in New England. And it’s not just her accent and the odd terms. She has a way of pausing before she speaks as though she’s afraid she’s not going to say the right thing. She seems so tense and—well, almost afraid of us.”

“Probably shy,” Mike said. “Who wouldn’t be, moving into a house with a nut like you in it?”

“I’d have to be a nut to date you!” I said, reaching over to ruff up his hair.

And so we kept on jabbing at each other and kidding around, the way we always did when we were together, and it wasn’t long before we had both forgotten about Julia completely.

The movie was a good one. We ran into Carolyn there with her boyfriend Rick, and we all went out afterward to Frank’s Drive-in and had cokes and french fries, so it was eleven-thirty or so by the time we pulled up in front of the house and parked to say goodnight.

The house was dark, and when Mike switched off his headlights everything was black for a few minutes. Then slowly things became visible once more—the maple tree in the front yard, the brick planter, Bobby’s bike leaning against the side of the garage. The curve of the half-moon looked as though it were caught in the branches of the maple, and the sweet breath of early summer came softly through the open windows, and Mike put his arm around me and pulled me over and kissed me.

“Why didn’t we start doing this sooner?” he whispered.

“At the movie?”

“No, you nut. Last year. Or the year before. How long did we know each other before I ever got around to kissing you?”

“I’ll figure it up sometime,” I said. “After all, we’ve known each other since we were on tricycles. You never even used to notice me except to tease me about my freckles.”

“Well, there wasn’t that much to notice,” Mike said. “Let’s face it, there’ve been some changes in the past year, all in the right places.”

“You’re awful!” I exclaimed, not meaning it at all. I lifted my face so he could kiss me again, and he was just about to when there was a squeak and a click from the direction of the house. We both stiffened and the moment was gone.

“That was the screen door,” Mike said. “Was somebody sitting out on your porch?”

“I can’t imagine who,” I said. “It’s too late for my folks to be up and all the lights are off inside.”

We got out of the car and walked together across the yard, Mike with his arm around my shoulders, and as we approached the porch we saw that there was indeed someone there. It was Peter.

“Hi,” he said. “How was the show?”

“Pretty good,” Mike said. “Did you have a rehearsal tonight?”

“Nope. Stayed home.”

“What are you doing out here?” I asked. “Waiting for us?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Then what?”

“Enjoying the moonlight. Is there any rule that says a guy can’t sit on his own porch?”

“None at all.”

I could not see his face in the shadows, but there was something strange about his voice. Pete usually had a sort of deadpan voice, the kind that can tell jokes, and you don’t even know they’re jokes until you think about them for a while. But tonight there was a different note, a sort of lift.

“Have you been out here long?” I asked.