“Hey! Slow down,” she yelled as he pulled her sliding, awkward, down the last grass. Her bare feet slipped from under her, and she finished second, on her behind, still holding Jolly’s hand.
“What do you say, grace?” he said and fell to his knees beside her where the sound of her laughter fought between her words.
“Wow! I thought for a second we’d be swimming.” She gathered up her knees in her arms. “It’s a pretty pond,” she said and tipped her face away from Jolly but not before he saw it pale. Her shoulders lifted with each breath.
“Yes. Course the water’s not too fresh.” He watched her back. “The frogs like it OK, I reckon.” Through the material of her blouse stretched tightly across her back he could see her breath pumping in and out. “You OK?” he asked.
She hesitated a second and said “Yes.” The sound carried out on one of the regular breaths. “Yes—I’m—OK—” She spaced the words with her breaths.
Then he heard the faint rasp like a small bellows makes when you spread the handles apart to draw in air. He suspended his own breath and listened. She lifted her head but kept it faced away. Beneath her hair long on her back, her shoulders continued to lift each time the bellows pumped in. Jolly stretched on his side and supported himself by one arm, bent at the elbow. He pulled a stem of turkey-foot grass. The outer tube slid up and off the inner stem smoothly. He twirled it back and forth between his thumb and fingers like the furious blades of a tiny helicopter. He put that stem between his teeth and pulled another. Then he rolled on his back and stared straight up at the sky, its blue more brilliant for the ragged edge of pine tops and the chalk clouds that rode high over one side. He listened for the rasps and counted the spaces between them until they grew farther and farther apart and then disappeared.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
She laughed shortly and turned toward him. The color had returned to her face except at the temples and around her lips. Those spots seemed translucent and faintly blue. “It’s supposed to be better up here.”
“Do you want to go back now?”
“No. Not yet,” she said. She turned to the water. “It’s a pretty pond,” she said. She leaned to the side to reach a pine cone. Before she threw it she held it under her nose a moment. The frog complained shortly and ducked under the surface. His eyes and nose appeared again close by. Her laughter flounced brown and warm over the clearing.
“Jolly?” she said, and the word had never sounded that way.
“What?” he said. He rolled his head to watch the back of her hair three feet away.
“Nothing,” she said. “You sound sleepy.”
“I am. This kind of day makes me sleepy. Besides,” he added, “I was kind of late getting in last night.”
“Were you with a girl?”
“Yes,” he said, which was only part of the truth. “Why?”
“No reason.”
Jolly watched the clouds gathering white and round above the trees and listened to the feel of her near him. He said to her, “Here, stretch out. The grass is soft.”
She twisted toward him and saw where his hand patted the grass. Her eyes lifted to his and the gold flecks had disappeared. “No,” she said and watched him.
“Why not? If you would you’d probably feel better.”
“I feel all right.” She watched his eyes as if she could read something there.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“You want to make love to me, don’t you,” she said simply.
Jolly sat up. “What! No! Yes. I mean—why’d you say that?”
“Isn’t that what you meant? When you asked me to lie down beside you?” Her eyes were wide and followed his wherever they turned. “Isn’t that what you had in mind?”
To say it wasn’t in his mind would be wrong, but it was far back, dark on the edges of his mind, just skirting there—not for a sunny afternoon in a pine clearing within the first hour of meeting.
“No! I didn’t mean
that,”
Jolly said. He stood up. Her eyes followed him. He faced the pond and said, “I just meant it’s a nice place to lie down and—and look at the sky. That’s all.”
After a moment she said, “Jolly?”
He turned to her. Her eyes still watched his but above them were creases of confusion. “Don’t be angry. I’m sorry,” she said and her eyes said “I don’t understand.”
He smiled. “You crazy. I’m not mad at you.” The lines passed from above her eyes and he said to himself “God knows I’m not mad at you, but I don’t understand.”
He walked out onto the little stone and cement dam to the middle and looked down into the water. All he saw was his own head, darkly, and the sky turned turquoise and pale green where the clouds were. He stretched one foot down until he could splash the front part of it in the water. He walked back across the dam.
“Dogie?” He had not called her by name before. “Does your mother like watercress?”
She was still watching him. “What is watercress’?” she asked. “Is that some kind of fish or something?”
“No,” he laughed and was relieved by it. “Come on, I’ll show you.” He did not reach for her hand but began walking down the stream bank where the water flowed after it left the dam. He could feel her follow behind him. After a short way he stopped and pointed. “There’s some,” he said and stepped down the bank to the stream.
“Those weeds?”
“These aren’t weeds.” He began pulling up small bunches of the yellow-green plants. “Here’s some mint, too. How about some mint?” He added the darker, rough leaves to the bunches in his hand.
“Are you sure these aren’t weeds’?” and her laugh tilted a moment before falling down to the stream.
Jolly climbed up the bank. “Of course I’m sure. I bet your mother will like them. I bet she’s had them before.” He saw the gold flecks had returned to where they belonged. “Here, smell this.” He crushed a leaf of mint and held it under her nose. She held his hand steady with her own.
“Hm. That’s perfect. Wait—may I keep it?”
“Sure. You can have all you want.”
“This is all I want,” she said. “Shall we go?” She faced upward toward the road, then bent her face to the mint again, and a faint breath shuddered across her shoulders.
Beside the Blue Goose they stopped. “Thanks for the walk,” she said, “and the mint.”
“Oh. Here. Take all this to your mother.” She reached her fingers above his hand to grasp the plants. “And Dogie?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll—I’d like to take you on a wiener roast or something. OK?”
Her nose wrinkled and scattered the freckles. “Thank you, Jolly. I’d love it. When?”
“How about tonight?”
“No, not tonight. How about Tuesday? That is, if you don’t have school work to do?”
Jolly grinned. “School can go—schoolwork can wait. I’ll call you.”
“All right.” She turned to the path that curved up to her house. “Goodbye.”
“So long,” he said. He watched her walk away, her face bent to the bouquet of water plants in her hands. “So long,” he said.
When the Blue Goose passed out through the flagstone pillars Jolly turned it to the west, away from town. “I’ll just drive up the ridge and look. It’s only four or five miles. And Luke’s not going anywhere that he’ll need the car.”
The road climbed gently until the end of the Mountain Knolls area where the pavement stopped. From there the climb was steeper but not too much for any car, including Luke’s. The road rocked down into dips every few hundred feet. Those would be rushing, mad little streams when the rains broke. Birch trees grew spotted black and white on the edges of the road where the dips crossed, their trunks rummaging among the wild ferns that loved their shade. Above them, thicker and taller as the road climbed, grew the giant ponderosas, dusty with age and thirst.
The road made its way along the outer ridges encircling Castle Dome, a barren shaft of black granite that rose immense and lonely above the pines and manzanita. You could see the Dome from town, but once on the road to it, it was hidden until you found yourself at its foot with nothing but forty miles of fast-falling cliffs and slopes, brush-covered, that stretched to the next range of mountains on the west. It was to this view of the valley that Jolly drove.
Today the far mountains were bluer and less purple than they would be after the rains had washed the air and crisscrossed the slopes with new gullies.
Jolly walked to the edge of the drop and looked down three thousand feet and across twenty miles. If the air were clear he could have picked out a speck of white, or the wink of glass that would be a house or perhaps the general store. He grasped the sleek-red limb of a manzanita and, using it for a balance, slid three or four feet down the slope to a flat rock that jutted out from the earth. From there, there was nothing to see but miles and miles of the country he had once roamed with Jamie, or more often with Pekoe, the dog. There, overlooking the ragged terrain that once hid bands of renegades and Indians whose bones gave the valley its name, nothing intercepted the view but visions of April laburnum playing along the top of the haze that hung like remembrance against the far mountains.
He should have asked Jamie where he was staying. Not that he would have found out. But if he knew, he’d barge in and ask him. Probably shacked up somewhere with a woman. He’d barge in anyway. Let him alone, like hell. There was just one question he wanted to ask Jamie, and he could damn well stop whatever he was so busy doing long enough to answer it.
JAMIE LAUGHED. “Hell, no, Mandy, you can’t fall in love with somebody in one hour or one day.”
She raised herself on her elbow and pushed the hair back from his forehead. “But I did, so what do you think of that?”
“No, you didn’t. Just because of the kid, and the thinking about it so long.”
She flopped on her pillow and pulled up on the sheet. “Well, two years ought to be enough, don’t you think? And darn long ones.”
Jamie held the baby on his knees bent up under the sheet. The boy laughed every time he heard either of their voices. He held one finger on each of Jamie’s hands and bounced on his fat, wet bottom. “Look, you haven’t—we haven’t even seen each other a dozen times. And are you going to change him? I got up and got him, you know.”
“Don’t change the subject, that’s what don’t change. So you don’t think I’m in love, Mr. Big? Well, let me demonstrate.”
“Hey! Stop it,” Jamie squirmed, his hands occupied with holding the child. “You’ll make me drop the kid. Stop that!” The child laughed aloud when he toppled off Jamie’s knees between them. “See? There,” he lifted the boy and set him astride his mother’s chest. “You want something to hold, how’s that present?”
“God, he’s drowned.” She set him off the edge of the bed onto the floor. “Now, just look. I’m sopping.”
“I’m looking, I’m looking,” Jamie laughed.
She stopped rubbing and reached for his face. She pulled it down close to hers and watched the blue eyes laughing. “I think if I can just keep you around long enough this time—”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Ow! You’re pulling my ears out by the roots, you know.”
She pulled harder, then relaxed her hold and linked her fingers behind his neck. “You’re beautiful,” she said.
He laughed, but gently. “That’s the first time anybody ever said that. My mother always said I was the ugliest little kid ever born, and I don’t think that opinion’s changed much.”
“No, you’re not.” She pulled his head down closer. “Well, are you going to, or not.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Maybe you ought to bring along that cute brother of yours so you could get some rest. What’s his name?”
“Jolly. But he isn’t.”
“Isn’t what?”
“Jolly. They ought to have named him Morry, or something. Short for Morose.”
“Well, you’ll have to do.” She twisted his hair around her fingers. “Weren’t you ever in love, Jamie? I mean, really. With somebody?”
He arched back his head, and with his one free hand unclasped her fingers. He swung his legs off the opposite side of the bed and sat with his back toward her. “Goddamit, Mandy. Don’t start again. No, I told you. No.”
She watched silently as he rose and scooped his clothes from the chair and stomped naked across the floor into the bathroom. “OK, sourpuss,” she said to herself. She turned over on her stomach. She stretched out one arm toward the child, who sat where she had placed him on the floor, now trying to fit one of Jamie’s boots over his head. She hung her head upside down over the edge of the bed and lifted up the boot. “You see?” The child howled in delight. “I told you. You wait and see.” She yanked the boot down over his eyes again.
From the back of the chair she took Jamie’s big robe and wrapped it around her and searched to one side and then the other for the ends of the belt. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said aloud.
“What?” came Jamie’s voice from the bathroom.
“I said—” The door opened a foot.
“What’d you say?”
“I said,” she lowered her voice, “I’ll make you a deal.”
“The hell you will. This morning you don’t get out of it.”
“But I can make better eggs than you can.”
“Well, I don’t care. He’s yours—”
“And yours.”
“—and it’s your turn to change him. I’d rather eat my cooking. Anyway, your coffee won’t take any prizes at any fair I ever heard of.”
“And I suppose you’ve seen ’em all.” She pushed the bathroom door open with her foot and leaned one hip against the jamb. The door hit Jamie on the back. “Don’t cut your throat.”
“Someday you’re going to ram that doorknob so far up my—”
“Ah, ah.” She wagged a finger.
He turned from the mirror, his face lathered except for a wide streak down one cheek. “You want something, nosey? You know this bathroom’s about big enough for a midget. I don’t see how you get all that,” he dabbed the safety razor toward her body “in here—not and close the door.”
“You’d have more room in here yourself in the mornings if you could stand closer to the sink,” she giggled.
He wiped a great gob of shaving cream from his face and flung it at her. “Get out of here!” She pulled the door closed fast enough so that most of the cream splattered against it on the inside.