Lucky Strikes (12 page)

If there's one thing you'll learn about that child, it's that she loves playing nurse. She likes to think she's at the Battle of Manassas, tending to soldiers. (Blue, gray, she don't care.) She takes their pulse, listens to their hearts, checks their joints, but mostly she bandages. Limb by limb till each of those soldier boys is a by-God mummy.

In the old days, she'd make Earle play soldier, but she'd want him to lay there for
hours
, dying slow, till he couldn't stand it no more. Then she started doing it with logs and branches and fallen tree trunks, and that's what I thought she was doing now till I saw the trunk move. A flesh-and-blood arm, answering to Janey's call, and another arm doing the same, and soon as I drew near, I could see the arms belonged to Hiram. Flat on the ground, quiet as church, half-smothered in bandages.

“Janey!” I called. “You oughtn't be wrappin' up Daddy Hiram.”

“It's all right,” he called back. “She's fine.”

So on they went, Hiram laying there and Janey whispering in his ear—
You shall live, brave soldier
. I stood for a stretch watching. Wondering, I guess, how it all might look through the eyes of Mr. Wallace Paxton of the commercial-loans division.

Then I remembered.

I had met Mr. Wallace Paxton!

The last time we'd fallen behind on payments, Mama had asked him to come over for supper. He was thin and pink and easy to bruise, with a bow tie that drooped almost to his chest and a mustache that looked like it was ready to crawl off his face. Mama fed him some of her ham and biscuits and sun tea, and just to seal the deal, she worn a green cotton housedress that showed off her assets. For near an hour, she shined on him, and when he staggered on out of there, she said, “What do you think, Mr. Paxton? Another couple months?”

“Well, all right,” he said.

I took his letter out of my pocket, read it through one more time. Asked myself how I could possibly sway Mr. Wallace Paxton without Mama's dress or Mama's figure. Hell, I didn't even know how to smile. Seemed to me all the advantages of being a girl was lost on me.

I heard a whisper of tire on the gravel behind me. Rolling up to the pump was Harley Blevins's butternut Chevrolet Eagle. The door opened, and out stepped Dudley, in that damn Buck Rogers suit, rumpling his hair and staring round.

“You cut it right close,” I said. “Five minutes more, we woulda been closed.”

“I know what time it is.”

“Yeah? And where's His Highness?”

“Back home.”

“Plotting his next devilment, I guess.”

“I don't know nothing about that.”

“Like fun you don't. Social workers and sheriffs. Loan officers. Before long, I reckon the U.S. Army'll come down on us.”

He left some spit on the ground. Smeared it into the gravel with his shoe.

“Y'all sell Bit-O-Honeys?”

“Sure we do.”

I watched him walking toward the store, all arms and legs, his head bobbing like it wasn't quite screwed on, his ears sticking out like gourd shells. How many times had I seen him walkin' that self-same way and never given it a thought? What was so different 'bout this time? All I know is one second, I was reaching for the nozzle, and the next, I was following him.

“Hey!” I called. “Got something you should see.”

He followed me round to the back of the store. The noise from the road fell away, and the sun dropped from sight, and it felt like the world dropped from sight, too. There he was, looking at me, wondering what the hell was going on, and I was wondering the same thing till something lit up in my head, and I shoved him against the wall and mashed my lips against his. So hard I could feel his front teeth banging against mine.

Now, I had always had definite notions about how my first kiss should go. It was gonna happen in a glade. Bees drowsing, birds humming. It was gonna be soft and tender, and the boy was gonna lead, and I was gonna
yield
, the way ladies do in the movies, all rustling silk.

But my first kiss happened against the back wall of a general store, with gas fumes in my nostrils, gravel crunching under my feet. It weren't tender, and it was the boy who yielded. Looked kinda like he'd been stabbed. (I found out later I'd knocked the wind out of him.) Whole thing didn't last more 'n a second or two.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

Which, now that I think on it, was the first time I'd ever said sorry to Dudley Blevins.

I jerked my head away and took a step back, but then he wrapped his hands round my shoulders and pulled me toward him and kissed me right back. I could feel his tongue folding round mine. I could taste the peppermint inside his cheeks, feel his breath on my skin.

When we pulled apart again, there wasn't a smile on neither of our faces.

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe we should take a walk sometime.”

“Okay.”

“How 'bout Sunday?”

“Sure.”

“Only it can't be during church. My aunt'd kill me.”

“How about after?” I said.

“After,” he said.

“Four, maybe?”

“Four,” he said.

“Okay, then.”

So I went and filled the Chevy Eagle, and he went in the store and bought his Bit-O-Honey and left some money on the counter and got in his car without a look my way. I started to wonder if maybe I'd dreamed the whole thing, but as he pulled out, he lowered the side window and poked his hand out. Let it wiggle a second in the breeze. Like an aspen leaf.

 

Chapter

TWELVE

“Melia!” said Janey.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Hiram was dozing in his armchair, and Janey and Earle was sitting under the dining table—their den of thieves, they liked to call it—playing their ten millionth game of old maid, and I thought my way to the door was clear, but then Janey poked her head out.

“Where you going?” she asked.

“No place.”

“How come you put on a dress?”

Now it was Earle's head poking out.

“Would you look at that? For crying out loud!”

“Reckon I'm allowed to wear a dress,” I said. “Don't have to be just for funerals.”

But Janey was crawling toward me now like a bluetick on a coon. “It's more 'n that. You combed your hair and washed your face.”

“Sweet Jesus,” said Earle.

“Something ain't right.”

I was about to answer, but the heat went rolling up my throat. The next second, Janey sprang to her feet.

“Holy smokes! Melia's going out with a feller.”

“No, she ain't,” said Earle.

“She is, I tell you!”

“Melia, are you going out with a feller?”

“Well—Jesus, I'm—I'm goin'
out
is all.”

“Who with?” Janey wanted to know.

It crossed my mind to lie.

“Dudley Blevins,” I mumbled.

“Who?”

“
Dudley Blevins.
Now you leave it there or…”

But Janey was giving me her look. That I'm-so-sorry-you're-so-stupid look.

“What?” I said.

“You sure took your ever-sweet-lovin' time about it, that's all.”

“I don't even know what you're talking 'bout.”

“Dudley's been sweet on you since forever,” she said. “What'd he have to do, hire a crop duster and scrawl it cross the sky?”

This was news, I confess.

I started running through all the things Dudley would do around me. Tip his head to one side. Shove his hands in his pockets and jangle the coins real loud. Sometimes I'd catch him leaning back against the car, like he owned it, only as soon as I caught him doing it, he'd straighten right back up and start itching round the back of his head. That's what being sweet was?

“Nuff of your fool talk,” I said. “This ain't a date. It's a business meeting.”

“Bet I know what business,” said Janey.

“Hush up.”

“Business!” she shouted.

Just loud enough to shake Hiram out of his nap. He come rolling up from his chair, eyes wild. “What? What is it?”

“Guess who's goin' walkin' with Dudley Blevins?”

The clouds on Hiram's face melted off. “Well, now,” he said. “Mr. Sun Tzu would be most pleased.”

We stared at him.

“
The Art of War
,” he explained.

We stared some more.

“
If your enemy's forces are united, separate them
,” he said.

“But Dudley ain't our enemy,” said Earle.

“He let me bandage him all the way to the shoulder,” said Janey.

“He may or may not be our enemy,” said Hiram, “but he's most definitely related to our enemy. As such, he might be useful.”

Well, if there's one word I'd never have thought to put alongside Dudley Blevins, it was
useful
. How exactly was I supposed to use him? I thought of Mama plying herself against Mr. Wallace Paxton from the First Bank of Virginia, and then I thought of me banging teeth with Dudley, and it was like two different games.

“Y'all make my head ache,” I said.

I was nearly to the door when I heard Janey say, “You shoulda put on rouge.”

Now, I was too shamed to admit it, but I'd spent a good half hour looking for Mama's rouge. Her clothes was all where we left 'em, still full of her smell, but those little female tricks she used to have at her call—the lipstick tube and the eye pencil and the face powder and the tortoiseshell hair clips—they was as good as gone.

Well, never mind, I thought, walking out to the road. I wouldn't have known what to do with 'em anyway.
He's gonna get the real me
, I thought.
God help him.

Now, it so happens I also had particular notions about my first courting. The feller was supposed to get there on time, for starters. He was supposed to roll up in—well, not a Bugatti or nothing, but a Caddy or a Packard. He'd be wearing a shirt with peppermint stripes and suspenders and a nice boater and black patent-leather shoes. Maybe an alpaca scarf.

Well, Dudley wore a work shirt and scuffed work shoes, and he rolled up ten minutes late in an old DeSoto delivery sedan that looked like it'd been driven round the moon and back.

“Where's the Chevy Eagle?” I asked.

“Hell, my uncle'd kill me if I took that out on a Sunday. This here's my buddy Elmer's. Drives like a peach.”

“I bet.”

“Climb on in.”

Also in the courtship of my dreams, the feller was gonna open the door for me.

“Where we going?” I asked.

“I dunno.”

But he drove straight and true, like he had a place in mind. Sure enough, once we'd gotten off the Loop Road, he pulled over in a clearing and cut the engine.

“What about here?” he said in a casual kind of way.

I peered out the window. All I saw at first was a row of poplars, but from the late-afternoon shadows, a little notch peered back. A trailhead.

“Holy Christ,” I said. “You want to go walking in the woods?”

“Sure.”

“But I didn't wear no dress so I could get all nature-y.”

To be honest, it wasn't even the dress I was thinking of, it was Mama's sandals. She'd seen Joan Crawford wearing them in a
Movie Mirror
feature, so she'd ordered knockoffs from J.C. Penney's, but they never did fit right, so after a couple of weeks, she'd tossed ' em to me.

“You're the one that's got the dainty feet,” she'd said.

And what a wonder it was. To know I had something dainty about me and to be wearing Joan Crawford's shoes. Point is, I didn't want nothing happening to those sandals.

“Can't we just walk on a street somewhere?” I said. “Like normal folks?”

“It's cooler in the woods.”

Well, here was something Mama and I had never got the chance to talk about. What exactly happened to gals who went walking in the woods with boys?

“I don't know, Dudley.”

“What's to know?”

“It's just I ain't exactly acquainted with this here stretch of woods.”

“I am.”

“Besides, I gotta be back in an hour. Two hours tops. They're expecting me.”

“We'll be back,” he said. “I brung my pocket watch.”

With a little smile, he drew it out of his dungarees. Old as time itself.

“Your uncle give that to you?” I asked.

“My granddaddy. He was with the railroad thirty years, and they let him keep it. Ain't it fine?”

Something in how he said that—proud and shy.

“All I care is if it keeps time,” I said.

“It does.”

“Well, okay, then.”

I got out of the car slow. Watched Dudley hoist a rucksack over his shoulder and amble toward the forest. Long, easy strides.

“How 'bout I go first?” he said.

“Okay.”

“Keep me in sight, now.”

“Then don't go fast.”

He slipped into those poplars like some kind of woodland critter, but me, I stopped right on the verge of that trailhead and made myself look back. There was the sky. There was the road. Dudley's cousin's sedan.

“You coming?” Dudley called.

The first step was the hardest. By the tenth, the sun had flown off, and the air was cool on my skin, and the sound of birds was tunneling into my ear. Robin, sparrow, yellowthroat.

The path was grown over at first, but it opened up soon enough, and before I even had my bearings, we was standing in front of a creek. A creek I'd never seen in all my days. Mighty and spring fed, frothing up on each side, clear all the way to the bottom.

“Does it have a name?” I asked.

Dudley shrugged.

“Well, which way do we go?” I asked.

“Up.”

“I don't see no trail.”