Authors: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
She wished she'd stopped at the Bullpen and asked Cliff or Rusty to come with her.
Her cowardice made her angry. She was having a hard enough time as it was getting them to follow her orders. Men like that didn't respect women bosses, especially when they were only sixteen. If any of them ever found out she was afraid of something as foolish as an old dead boat, they'd never listen to her again.
A flutter of wings burst from behind her as an owl swooped out over the lake from the trees. She sucked in her breath. Just then, she heard the distant sound of a moan.
She didn't have any patience with superstition, but the menacing shape of the dead ship looming at the end of the dock had her spooked, and for a fraction of a second she thought the sound might be coming from a vampire or a succubus or some kind of zombie. Then the moon skidded out from beneath a wisp of cloud and common sense reasserted itself. She knew exactly what she had heard, and it didn't have anything to do with zombies.
She tore down the dock, her flip-flops spanking her heels as she sidestepped the rotted boards and dodged a pile of rope. The boat had sunk five feet from the end of the dock, and the upper deck railing, broken like a gap-toothed smile, loomed ahead of her above the water level. She raced toward the piece of plywood that served as a makeshift ramp and dashed up its incline. It sprang beneath her ninety pounds like a trampoline.
The bottoms of her feet stung as she landed hard on the upper deck. She clutched a piece of the railing to balance herself and then ran toward the staircase. It descended into the murky water. Even in the darkness, she could see the white belly of a dead fish floating near the submerged stair treads.
Throwing her leg over the peeling wooden railing, she raced up the section of staircase that still rose above the surface of the water to the pilothouse.
A man and woman were sprawled near its door, their bodies intertwined. They were too caught up in each other to hear the noise of Honey's approach.
"Let her go, you peckerhead!" Honey shouted as she reached the top.
The figures sprang apart. A bat flew out from the broken window of the pilothouse.
"Honey!" Chantal exclaimed. Her blouse was open, her nipples silver dollars in the moonlight.
The young man she was with sprang to his feet, jerking up the zipper of the cutoffs he wore with a University of South Carolina T-shirt that had
"Gamecocks" written across the front. For a moment he looked dazed and disoriented, and then he took in Honey's chewed hair, tiny stature, and the hostile
scowl that made her look more like an ill-tempered ten-year-old boy than a young girl.
"You go on, y'hear?" he said belligerently. "Y'all got no business here."
Chantal rose from the deck and lifted her hand to close the front of her blouse.
The movement was slow and lazy, just like all her movements were. The boy draped his arm around her shoulders.
The familiar way he embraced Chantal, as if she belonged to him instead of to Honey, ignited her already simmering temper. Chantal was hers, along with Aunt Sophie and the ruins of the Silver Lake Amusement Park! Using her index finger as a weapon, she pointed down to the deck by her side. "You get over here, Chantal Booker. I mean it. You get over here right now."
Chantal stared at her sandals for a moment and then took a reluctant step forward.
The college boy grabbed her arm. "Wait a minute. Who is she? What's she doin'
here, Chantal?"
"My cousin Honey," Chantal replied. "She runs things, I guess."
Once again Honey punched her finger toward the deck. "You bet I run things.
Now you get over here
this minute."
Chantal attempted to move forward, but the boy wouldn't release her. He curled his other hand over her arm. "Aw, she's just a kid. You don't have to listen to her." He gestured toward the shore. "You go on back where you came from, little girl."
Honey's eyes narrowed into slits. "Listen to me, college boy. If you know what's good for you, you'll pack that undersized pecker of yours right back in your dirty underwear and get off this boat before you make me mad."
He shook his head incredulously. "I think I might just throw you right over the side of this boat, baby face, and let the fish eat you."
"I wouldn't try it." Honey took a threatening step, her small chin jutted forward.
She despised it when people made fun of the way she looked. "Maybe I better tell you that I got out of reform school just last week for knifing a man who was a lot bigger than you are. They would have give me the electric chair, but I was underage."
"Is that so? Well, I don't happen to believe you."
Chantal signed. "Honey, you gonna tell Mama?"
Honey ignored her and concentrated on the boy. "How old did Chantal tell you she was?"
"None of your beeswax."
"Did she tell you she was eighteen?"
He glanced at Chantal, and for the first time he looked uncertain.
"I might of known," Honey said with disgust. "That girl's only fifteen years old.
Didn't they teach you anything about statutory rape at the University of South Carolina?"
The boy released Chantal as if she were radioactive. "Is that true, Chantal? You sure look older than fifteen."
Honey spoke before Chantal had the chance. "She matured early."
"Now, Honey ..." Chantal protested.
He began easing away. "Maybe we better call it a night, Chantal." He sauntered toward the staircase.
"I had a real good time. Maybe I'll see you again sometime, all right?"
"Sure, Chris. I'd like that."
He fled down the stairs. They could hear the
sprong
of the plywood plank and then a thump as he landed on the dock. Both girls watched him disappear into the pines.
Chantal sighed, eased down onto the deck, and leaned back against the pilothouse. "You got any cigarettes on you?"
Honey pulled out a crushed pack of Salems and handed it over as she lowered herself next to her cousin. Chantal slipped the matches out from under the cellophane and lit the cigarette. She took a deep, easy drag. "Why'd you go and tell him I was only fifteen?"
"I didn't want to have to fight him."
"Honey, you weren't gonna fight him. You didn't even come up to his chin.
And you know that I'm eighteen—two years older'n you are."
"I might have fought him." Honey took the cigarettes back but, after a moment's hesitation, decided not
to light one. She'd been trying for months to learn how to smoke, but she just couldn't get the hang of it.
"And all that stuff about reform school and knifing a man. Nobody believes you."
"Some do."
"I don't think it's good to tell so many lies."
"It goes along with being a woman in the business world. Otherwise people take advantage of you."
Chantal's legs stretched bare and shapely from beneath her white shorts as she crossed her ankles. Honey studied her cousin's sandaled feet and polished toenails. She considered Chantal the prettiest woman she'd ever seen. It was hard to believe she was the daughter of Earl and Sophie Booker, neither of whom had ever won any prizes for good looks. Chantal had a cloud of curly dark hair, exotic eyes that tilted up at the corners, a small red mouth, and a soft, feminine figure. With her dark hair and olive skin, she looked like a Latin spitfire, a misleading impression since Chantal didn't have much more spirit than an old hound dog on a hot day in August. Honey loved her anyway.
Cigarette smoke ribboned from Chantal's top lip into her nostrils as she French-inhaled. "I'd give just about anything to be married to a movie star. I mean it, Honey. I'd give just about anything to be
Mrs. Burt Reynolds."
In Honey's opinion, Burt Reynolds was about twenty years too old for Chantal, but she knew she could never convince her cousin of that fact so she played her trump card right off the top. "Mr. Burt Reynolds is a southern boy. Southern boys like to marry virgins."
"I'm still sort of a virgin."
"Thanks to me."
"I wasn't gonna let Chris go all the way."
"Chantal, you might not of been able to stop him once he got worked up. You know you're not real good at saying no to people."
"You gonna tell Mama?"
"A lot of good that'd do. She'd just change the channel and go back to sleep.
This is the third time I've caught you with one of those college boys. They come sniffin' around you just like you're sending out some kind of radio signal or something. And what about that boy you were with in the House of Horror last month? When I found you, he had his hand right inside your shorts."
"It feels good when boys do that. And he was real nice."
Honey snorted in disgust. There was no talking to Chantal. She was sweet, but she wasn't too bright. Not that Honey had room to criticize. At least Chantal had made it through high school, which was more than Honey had been able to do.
Honey hadn't quit school because she was dumb—she was a voracious reader and she'd always been smart as a whip. She'd quit because she had better things to do than spend her time with a bunch of ignorant peckerhead girls who told everybody she was a lesbian just because they were afraid of her.
The memory still made her feel like crawling away somewhere and hiding.
Honey wasn't pretty like the other girls. She didn't wear cute clothes or have a bubbly personality, but that didn't mean she was a lesbian, did it? The question bothered her because she wasn't absolutely sure of the answer. She certainly couldn't imagine letting a boy touch her under her shorts like Chantal did.
Chantal's voice interrupted the silence that had fallen between them. "Do you ever think about your mama?"
"Not so much anymore." Honey picked at a piece of splintered wood on the deck. "But since you brought up the subject, it wouldn't do you any harm to think about what happened to my mama when she was even younger than you.
She let a college boy come sniffin' around her, and it ruined her life."
"I don't follow you. If your mama hadn't slept with that college boy, you wouldn't of been born. Then where would you be?"
"That's not the point. The point is—college boys only want one thing from girls like you and my mama. They only want sex. And after they get it, they disappear. Do you want to end up all by yourself with a baby to take care of and nothing except the welfare system to support you?"
"Chris said I was prettier than any of the sorority girls he knows."
It was no use. Chantal always managed to get sidetracked when Honey was trying to make a point. At times like this, Honey despaired over Chantal. How could her cousin ever manage life if Honey weren't around to look after her?
Even though Chantal was older, Honey had been taking care of her for years, trying to teach her right from wrong and how to get along in the world.
Knowing about those things seemed to come naturally to Honey, but Chantal was a lot like Sophie. She didn't have much interest in anything that required effort.
"Honey, how come you don't fix yourself up a little bit so you could have some boyfriends, too?"
Honey leapt to her feet. "I'm not a damn lesbian, if that's what you're tryin' to say!"
"I'm not sayin' that at all." Chantal gazed thoughtfully at the smoke curling from the end of her cigarette. "I guess if you was a lesbian, I would of been the first one to know about it. We been sleepin' in the same bed ever since you came to live with us, and you never tried anything with me."
Vaguely mollified, Honey resumed her seat. "Did you practice your baton today?"
"Maybe ... I don't remember."
"You didn't, did you?"
"Baton twirling is hard, Honey."
"It's not hard. You've just got to practice, that's all. You know I'm planning to put flames on it next week."
"Why'd you have to pick something hard like baton twirling?"
"You can't sing. You don't play any musical instrument or tap-dance. It was the only thing I could think of."
"I just don't see why it's so important for me to win the Miss Paxawatchie County Beauty Pageant. Not
if the Walt Disney people are gonna buy the park."
"We don't know that, Chantal. It's just a rumor. I wrote them another letter, but we haven't heard anything, and we can't just sit back and wait."
"You didn't make me enter the contest last year. Why do I have to do it this year?"
"Because last year's prize was a hundred dollars and a beauty make-over at Dundee's Department Store. This year it's an all-expense-paid overnight trip to Charleston to audition for
The Dash Coogan Show.
"
"That's another thing, Honey," Chantal complained. "I think you got unrealistic expectations about all of this. I don't know anything about being on TV. I been thinking more along the lines of being a hairdresser. I like hair."
"You don't have to know anything about being on TV. They want a fresh face.
I've explained it to you about a hundred times."
Honey reached into her pocket and pulled out the well-worn pamphlet that gave all the information about this year's Miss Paxawatchie County Beauty Pageant.
She turned to the back page. The moonlight wasn't bright enough for her to read the small print, but she had studied it so many times she knew it by heart.
The winner of the Miss Paxawatchie County title will receive an all-expense-paid overnight trip to Charleston, compliments of the pageant's sponsor, Dundee's Department Store. While in Charleston, she will audition for
The Dash Coogan Show
, a much-anticipated new fall network television program that will be filmed in California.
The producers of
The Dash Coogan Show
are auditioning Southern lovelies in seven cities in search of an actress to play the part of Celeste, Mr. Coogan's daughter. She must be between eighteen and twenty-one years old, beautiful, and have a strong regional accent. In addition to visiting Charleston, the producers will also be auditioning actresses in Atlanta, New Orleans, Birmingham, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.
Honey frowned. That part bothered her. Those TV people were visiting three cities in Texas, but only one in the southern states. It didn't take much brain power to figure out that they would prefer a Texan, which she supposed wasn't surprising since Dash Coogan was the king of the cowboy movie stars, but she still didn't like it. As she gazed back down at the pamphlet, she comforted herself with the knowledge that there couldn't be a single woman in all of Texas who was prettier than Chantal Booker.