He watched as Darlene got out of the car, her full twist of a mouth turning down at the corners in a haughty smile, big slanted eyes flashing over high cheekbones. One of the girls said something to her and they all giggled. Darlene flushed and laughed and threw a magazine back through the window at them. Showing off. She tossed a glance in Harley’s direction, then went parading along behind the backstop, hips and breasts doing the damnedest things under her sleeveless cornflower-blue dress. He was pleased to see she wore the ankle chain.
He heard the crack of the bat but by the time it registered, the ball was a thin white blur whistling past his ear. His glove automatically snapped up in its wake, but that ball was long gone and Jimmy Phillips from Blackwell was pumping his knees ninety-to-nothing, coming down the first-base line with everybody yelling, and Anse, the man on second, was already rounding third, headed home. It was a fair ball just inside the base line. He could have stuck up his glove and had it without moving out of his tracks.
Frog Anderson tried to stop it in right field but it took a bad hop, jumped his glove, sank up in his jelly belly, and came spitting back out, Frog swatting at it, sucking air. It didn’t matter anyway; Anse was crossing home plate, and everybody was hooting and hollering, and that Blackwell bunch were blowing their car horns and going crazy, and by now Phillips was rounding third, headed home. Phillips had a home run on what would have been a line drive to first if Harley had been on his toes instead of daydreaming over Darlene Delaney. That was it. He had lost the game: Blackwell five, Separation three.
Billy Wayne Hinchley glared at him with his big head cocked to one side, hands on his hips as though he might like to do something about it. Willie McDonald on second slammed his glove on the ground and kicked up a cloud of dust. There was a lot of noise: “You wanna sleep out there, we’ll get you a cot.” “Get that boy some caffeine.” “Gonna get killed standing around on the ball field, your face hanging out like that.”
He felt himself flushing—looking like a damn fool right in front of Darlene. Pretty soon everybody quieted down, and some of the boys even thought it was funny. The Blackwell team hung around for a while, rehashing the game with the Separation boys. Most of the older men went on back to work or down to the café.
“Goddamn
,
you can flat throw that ball,” Jimmy Phillips said to Billy Wayne.
“And you can flat hit the hell out of it, too,” Billy Wayne replied, a sideways glance at Harley. “You just about knocked that cover plumb off.”
“Shit, let’s all go swimming,” Frog said, rubbing the red spot on the fat under his T-shirt where the ball had popped him.
“Yeah, let’s all go swimming.” They began gathering up balls, gloves and bats, stuffing them in the tow sacks they hauled them around in.
Harley picked up a practice ball, slapped it in his glove and shuffled over to where Darlene stood with her three girlfriends near the bleachers. The girls were laughing, talking loud, trying to get attention without being obvious. Darlene looked at Harley and rolled her eyes. “Where was your mind at, anyway, Harley Jay!”
He forced a grin. “Take a guess.”
Billy Wayne Hinchley stepped between them, his back to Harley. “Hey, y’all girls wanna go swimming with us?”
They giggled and turned red, all but Darlene, and some of the boys laughed out loud because everybody knew the boys skinny-dipped. A few Blackwell boys paused nearby, looking on with slit-eyed grins.
Clara Ann, a small blond with freckles and a turned-up nose, said, “What makes you think we’d go swimming with
you
, anyhow?”
“It might be real educational,” Billy Wayne said, that grin hooked up one side of his face.
“Sheew. You can’t teach me nothing,” Clara Ann said. “You don’t know nothing
I
don’t know.”
“Okay, then, you be the teacher. Maybe you can show me a thing or two.”
“Just what do you mean by
that
, Billy Wayne Hinchley?”
The girls were red and sweaty and embarrassed, but Harley could see they were tickled to death over it. All but Darlene.
“C’mon and find out,” Billy Wayne said.
“Shoot, I wouldn’t go nowhere with you, not even to a dogfight.”
“Aw, Clara Ann, they don’t come any nicer’n me,” Billy Wayne said.
“Or bigger either,” Jimmy Phillips said, and all the boys whooped and whistled.
“Just what do you mean by
that
crack?” Clara Ann said, but she was flushed, and she and everybody else knew what he meant. Word had gotten around from the gym showers about Billy Wayne’s big pecker. It was big even in relation to his head and nose. Harley had to admit he hadn’t seen a dong like that on anything short of old Lucifer, Uncle Jay’s stud horse.
“You wanna find that out, you gotta go swimming with us,” Billy Wayne said.
Darlene swelled up and stepped out in front of the other girls. “You really think you’re hot stuff, don’t you.”
Billy Wayne looked her over with his seedy little eyes. “Try me.”
Harley was about to step in when Darlene’s face screwed itself out of shape and she gave Billy Wayne a look that would wither a stove bolt. “Not if you were the last ugly little dwarf on God’s green earth.”
Everybody laughed. Billy Wayne laughed too, though his color was up.
“Hoo-wee!” somebody shouted.
“Aw, c’mon, y’all, let’s go swimming.”
A few boys broke away. Others hovered nearby, leering.
Billy Wayne stood in place, looking Darlene over. “You hurting
bad
, ain’t you.”
“That’s enough,” Harley said sharply.
“You’re a nasty little boy,” Darlene said to Billy Wayne. She turned and stomped off toward her daddy’s pickup, nose in the air.
Billy Wayne slouched against his Chevy, watching Darlene walk away. He laughed a short bark of a laugh. Darlene stopped. She looked flustered for a second, then turned and came directly to Harley, her eyes flashing over his shoulder at Billy Wayne.
“We still going to the musical tonight?” she demanded loudly.
Harley swallowed. “Sure. Why not?”
“Well, who knows, you go off with that…that
Prince Charming
there, and who knows where y’all are gonna end up.”
“Not me. I’m going swimming for about ten minutes. I gotta do the milking and feeding tonight, so I’d better meet you there.”
Darlene shrugged. Her gaze flicked past Harley again; then she looked back at him, quick, and all at once her mad look dissolved and she smiled as sweet a smile as he had ever seen. He thought for a second she was actually going to kiss him right there in front of everybody. Instead, she put one hand on his shoulder, cupped her other hand to his ear and whispered, “Okay. I’ll meet you there. Say around seven.” Then she drew back and blushed that same sweet smile on him again—as though she had just confided the grandest secret in the whole world. She turned then, chin up, and marched with a jaunty, hip-swinging show toward the other girls, who were looking on with gleeful anticipation.
“Let’s go down to the café and get something cold to drink,” Darlene said airily, and the girls piled into the cab of her daddy’s pickup, giggling among themselves. Darlene waved at Harley with a big showy smile and then drove down across the school grounds to the café.
Billy Wayne had climbed into his car with three other boys. He sat with his arms draped over the steering wheel, grinning his crooked grin, just as if Darlene had whispered in his ear and not Harley’s at all.
Willie McDonald got in the cab of Harley’s old 1935 Ford pickup. Frog and Bender climbed up in the bed behind.
“I’m only going for a quick dip,” Harley said. “Y’all want to stay, you’re gonna have to ride back with somebody else.” He slid in behind the wheel and backed around at the same time Billy Wayne did so that both vehicles were facing each other. Engines revved, clutches slapped and dirt drummed under the fenders. Harley heard Frog cursing from where he and Bender slammed back into the tailgate. They missed a head-on collision only because Billy Wayne slacked off and cut his wheel at the last moment, Harley gambling correctly that Billy Wayne wouldn’t bash up that shiny ’55 red Chevy with its customized vinyl interior and its horn that played “Dixie
,
” just to smash Harley’s old pickup.
Harley downshifted coming off the school grounds and hit the highway across from Enoch Engleson’s mechanic shop, tires squalling over the pavement. Frog and Bender hunkered down behind the cab. In the rearview mirror Harley saw Frog throw his head back and let go a rebel yell that could be heard for five miles over the whine of the engine: “Yeeeeee-haaaaaaaa!”
Harley angled off onto the lake road just before the Separation Baptist Church, upshifting into third gear. The Chevy was right on his tail, but let off in the big cloud of dust that whoomed up when the pickup went off onto the caliche. They blew by the galvanized sprawl of the cotton gin, and then old Sanchez’s trailer house blurred past in its camouflage of weeds and junked cars. Harley saw in the rearview mirror, over the .22 in the gun rack, that Frog and Bender were huddled in close to the cab again, dust boiling up behind.
After another half mile the caliche played out to hard-packed red clay and the Chevy crawled up behind them again. Harley glanced at the speedometer. It wobbled on sixty-five. Frog yelled and pumped his middle finger over the tailgate at the red Chevy closing on their bumper now.
Harley glanced at the speedometer—seventy—all the old truck would do, and now Billy Wayne was blowing that horn, “Dixie” sweeping away on the wind, lost under the whine of the engine, the roar of tires and gravel clattering underneath. Harley glanced in the rearview, glimpsed Billy Wayne’s passengers laughing and yelling, giving him and his bunch the finger, Billy Wayne’s big head hanging out the driver’s window.
Frog reached around inside the cab behind Harley and pulled the .22 out of the rack.
“Hey!” Harley yelled, but Frog was already sliding back to the tailgate, pumping a cartridge into the chamber. Frog fired at the ground alongside the Chevy, right under Billy Wayne’s head. “Yeeeee-haaaaaa!” Frog yelled, and fired several shots in quick succession. Billy Wayne jerked his head back inside. The Chevy wavered a little, but did pretty well, considering they were doing seventy on a dirt road. The Chevy fell back then, Frog laughing till it looked like he might fall out of the pickup. “Yeeeeee-haaaaaa!”
Willie McDonald stared through the rear window. “That son of a bitch is crazy as hell.”
“Which one?”
“Son of a bitch… All of ’em!”
They dropped down a long slope and slowed to fifty, rattling over a narrow wooden bridge. In another half mile, the mesquite flats fell away to a low roll of shallow draws patchy with scrub juniper and prickly pear. Harley slowed again and turned across a cattle guard onto a one-track lane grown up in weeds. A weathered sign nailed on a post read: P
UBLIC
L
AKE
—
S
EPARATION
,
T
EXAS
.
Harley brought the pickup to a stop at the base of the dam—a wall of dirt a hundred yards long covered with sunflowers and cockleburs. They got out and the red Chevy came bouncing to a stop, that bunch piling out, Anse yelling curses at Frog for trying to kill them with the .22. And then the first Blackwell bunch showed up: “goddamn, y’all in some kinda hurry or something?”
“Listen,” Link Eggert said, “we ain’t like them old slow boys from Blackwell. We don’t mess around.”
“
Who
don’t mess around?” Billy Wayne shouted. “Maybe
you
don’t mess around, but don’t speak for me. Shoot, I mess around every chance I get!”
“Well, you ain’t gonna mess around long, old Frog shoots your tallywacker
off with that .22.”
“He shoots my tallywacker off, every woman in the country’s gonna come down on his sorry ass.”
With a big
ka-sloosh
, Frog cannonballed off the homemade board, and soon they were all snorting and blowing water and dunking one another. Billy Wayne stood on the diving board shaking his pecker at Frog. “You see this tool of mine? I mean, when this thing gets going something’s gonna get tore up—
bad
!”
“Too dangerous to be wagging around, if you ask me,” Bender said.
“I’d be scared a having a sneezing fit and whuppin’ myself to death,” Frog said.
In another ten minutes Harley looked toward the sun. “Well, I gotta get home and get the feeding done.”
“Yeah,” Willie said. “Water’s muddying up, anyhow.” Frog followed Willie McDonald out, both sweeping water off with their hands. Harley dried himself with his shirt, pulled on his shorts and jeans, then his boots. The other boys began wading ashore, gathering up their clothes.
“Don’t blame you for being in a hurry,” Jimmy Phillips said to Harley. “That Darlene Delaney, she’s one fine-looking filly.”
Billy Wayne looked up from buttoning his shirt, wet hair wrapped around his forehead. “Ever get any of that?”
Everybody went quiet. Harley paused, then finished pulling on his boots. He got up then and went over and stood in front of Billy Wayne. “You ever say one off-color word around her, I’m gonna stomp your ass so far in the ground you’ll have to dig it out with a shovel. If you was a foot taller, I’d do it anyway.”
“Whoo-ee!” The boys gathered around: “Go get him, slick!” “Hey, you gonna take that shit?”
Harley and Billy Wayne stood face-to-face. But Harley was in a lose-lose situation—beating up a guy smaller than himself, or worse, getting beaten up by a guy smaller than himself.
Billy Wayne squinted. “Your Sunday gal, huh?”
“You got it.”
Billy Wayne’s grin dug in on one side. “Me, I like a Saturday-night kinda woman myself.” He turned, sat on a boulder and began pulling on his socks.