Seventeenth Summer (22 page)

I tried to keep myself from seeing that summer was slipping by though everything about me sang with it—the full, warm swell of the July breezes and the full-blown poppies that turned heavy-headed and scattered their petals to the ground. In the garden the corn was ripe and the leaves were satin-shiny in the sunlight, and when I broke open the ears, the rows of even kernels showed through like teeth, in a sudden yellow grin. The tomatoes lay open to the sun, ripe and tight in their skins and crickets burrowed into them from the ground side, nibbling ragged holes in the firm red fruit. The squash vine that trailed between the corn put out a yellow trumpet of a blossom and little green, warted
cucumbers lay on the hot earth. There was no more small pink and white clover scattered on the lawn and no damp, hidden corners, close to the house, with fresh, new shoots coming through. The air was heavy and sultry and the earth rich and full with growing. Summer was in its heyday.

Late one afternoon Jack and I went out for a ride along the old creek road. On the bridge over the stream he parked the truck and we got out to lean over the rail and look at the water. The long, hot days had shrunk the creek into a narrow trickle, leaving the green water reeds high and dry in a muck of red clay. As we stood there a farmer with a team of horses clop-clopped over the bridge with a straggling load of alfalfa with tiny purple flowers, and he stared at us in silence as he passed. Long after he had gone, a low, yellow dust from the wagon wheels hung over the road.

“I guess he thinks we’re crazy,” Jack said.

“Uhuh. I guess he does.”

In from the fields came the silken hush of the wind in the tall weeds and the air was honey-sweet with clover. Along the creek, small willows shuddered and showed the white side of their leaves to the breeze and an occasional fat frog plopped into the water, dislodging patches of green-brown scum that lazied along with the current to catch against water reeds farther down the stream. Jack kicked a sprinkle of gravel over the bridge with the toe of his shoe and it splashed with a tinkling sound like small bells. The sun was warm on our heads and shoulders.

“It’s getting on so that summer’s almost over,” he said,
musing. “And it seems just like yesterday that school let out.”

“It isn’t nearly over,” I told him. “It isn’t much more than half gone.”

“Sure it is,” he insisted. “About four more weeks and you’ll be going away to school. After July is gone, summer is gone.”

“Four weeks is a long time, though, Jack, and maybe you can come down to see me at school once in a while—and then I’ll always come home for holidays and things….” I tried to make my voice sound reassuring.

“Sure, I know it,” he said. “But it’s just that it won’t be summer anymore and it won’t be quite the same.”

A bit of bleached wood floated slowly beneath us, bobbing gently, and we watched it till it passed under the bridge and was gone. The coffee-brown water was shot through with sunlight. Jack turned to look me full in the face, squinting a little against the sun. “Gee, Angie,” he said in a puzzled voice, “I don’t know what it’s going to be like around here when you’re gone!”

My father had some business in Minaqua in far northern Wisconsin and my mother, Kitty, and I drove with him and spent the weekend. We drove for miles over long, cool highways lined with silent pine woods, strange and dark. All Saturday my mother and I shopped. We bought a playsuit for Kitty with Swiss embroidery and some bright, striped chintz for drapes and a bedspread for my room at college. “Something cheery is good when you’re away from home,” my mother said.

That night I tried to write Jack a note on hotel stationery but tore it up because the pen scratched and I couldn’t think of anything to say anyway. I bought a colored postcard in the lobby with a picture of a tall, stratifed rock with an Indian standing on it and wrote, “Dear Jack—You wouldn’t believe how beautiful it is up here.The pines are wonderful. Be good and I’ll see you soon.” The next morning I was sorry I had sent it. It didn’t say what I meant. But you can’t put on a postcard how much you miss a boy.

I never expected to meet Lorraine and Martin there that night. Except for the few moments at the Fourth-of-July parade I had never seen them out together. Jack and I went down to the Rathskeller by ourselves and met Fitz and Margie there. The Rathskeller is a night club; a dark, down-a-flight-of-stairs sort of place where it is necessary to keep the lights on even in the daytime. There are imitation windows set with leaded-colored glass and arranged with a glow of light behind them to give a touch of reality, but they are really set in the wall below street level. The walls are paneled in heavy wood and the tables and chairs are thick and brown so that the whole room seems to be in a yellowbrown haze all the time. It gave me a dark, excited feeling just to he there.

It was a hot, muggy night and even the breeze was warm, but in here the floors and walls gave off a dusky coolness. The four of us sat at a small table in the corner and I let Margie take the chair on the outside—I felt uneasy to be seen in a place like this.
There had been bars in Pete’s and Chet’s but this place was different. It had such a dark, nighttime look. A waiter in a short, white coat and a pencil stuck behind his ear came to take our order and they all asked for beer except me. Even Margie asked for beer and when it came she poured it herself, tapping the glass with the bottle to keep the white foam from topping the edge of the glass. Then Fitz filled his glass, raised it, and touched Jack’s. Then he touched Margie’s and they all said in a chorus that sounded to me like “Roast it!” and took the first swallow. I just sipped my Coke and pretended to know what they were doing. I meant to ask Jack about it later.

Over in one corner was an ornate jukebox with lights inside that made its decorated front shine like murky, colored water flowing upward in a steady stream, twisting and turning until the colors seemed to be braided together. It was a gaudy thing, like a woman with too much rouge on, and the glow it made in the corner of the room was almost warm and tangible enough to touch and the bright, twisting colors added a strange color to the music that came out of the box. There was something oddly sensuous about it. Even when I was talking to Jack I could see it out of the corner of my eye, the slow, blurred turnings of the lights, quietly insistent.

Fitz and Margie left the table to dance and we watched them. There were others dancing, people who were older than we were. Most of the fellows had slick, wet-looking hair that still showed the comb marks—the kind of boy who wears a navy-blue suit
with a narrow stripe for Sundays and for best occasions even in the heat of summertime. I remember noticing two girls sitting at one of the tables. They wore thin blue satin blouses that caught the colored shine of the light of the jukebox, making them seem to move beneath the shiny material even when they were sitting perfectly still. I seemed to remember vaguely having seen them somewhere before. When they danced they stood first very close to their partners and then far away, moving with short, jerky steps and flat, expressionless faces. They never talked when they danced. Fitz danced with his chin on Margie’s head and held her hand down far, near her hip. She closed her eyes and they didn’t talk when they danced either, but that was different. Jack and I watched them till the glow of the jukebox and the warm dusk of the room mingled together and swam before my eyes in a low-light murkiness as exciting as wine.

We had doubled with Fitz and Margie so often that I had learned not to seem surprised at anything they did. When they came back to the table both had another bottle of beer and we talked together for a short while before Fitz glanced nervously at his wrist watch, saying, “I hate to break this up but we’d better leave you kids and shove off. Margie’s mother don’t want her going out so much lately so we got to be cautious.”

Margie opened her purse and patted her hair in the mirror, remarking coyly, “I know you two aren’t going to mind being left alone ….”

Fitz looked at his watch again and stammered apologetically,

“It’s just a little after nine o’clock now but she has to be in early and if you kids don’t care … well … you know how it is. We want a little time.”

“That’s all right, fella,” Jack answered. “Go ahead.”

After they left we moved to a table near the big grand piano that was set in the middle of the floor. “They’ve got a wonderful colored pianist for the floor show,” Jack told me. “He doesn’t come on till ten o’clock but I want to sit where we can see him as well as hear him. I don’t know much about music myself but they say that fellow’s got magic fingers.

“He’s from Chicago,” he explained. “Used to play at the Three Deuces there.”

I drew my eyebrows together, trying to look interested, but I couldn’t remember ever having heard of the Three Deuces before. And I had only been in Chicago twice.

“You know, that ‘home of swing’ place that everyone used to talk about,” he went on, explaining with his hands as if he were blowing on a trumpet. “That place where they had big jive sessions and stuff—regular Bix Beiderbecke. It burned down a couple of New Year’s Eves ago.”

He sat thinking, making wet rings on the brown table top with his beer glass. “Used to play there before it burned down,” he commented absently.

Just then Martin and Lorraine came in. She was squinting a little to get used to the duskiness of the place and didn’t see me at first. I was as surprised to see her as she was to see me, though
I had often wondered where she and Martin went at night. Jack stood up as they came over to our table. “Hello there, Angie,” Martin said heartily and, “Hi there, fellow, long time no see!” to Jack, pumping his hand and slapping him on the back. Jack looked surprised.

“Won’t you two pull up a couple of chairs and have a glass of beer with us?” he asked politely.

But Lorraine put in hastily. “Thanks anyway, Jack. I don’t think we’ll bother. We were on our way somewhere else and just stopped in for—”

“Sure. ’Course we will,” Martin interrupted, and pulled over two chairs from the next table. “We got a little time to spare—especially when I haven’t seen this cute young sister of yours for such a long time,” and he gave me an exaggerated wink. I had never seen him act the way he did that night.

When the waiter came to our table he said benevolently, “We’ll have the same as before for these two and a couple of Scotch and seltzers here,” pointing to Lorraine and himself.

“No, thank you,” Lorraine interrupted again. “I’ll have a Coke if you don’t mind.”

Martin looked at her. “A Coke …” he began incredulously and then looked at me. “Oh. Oh, all right. Sure. Waiter, make that one Scotch here and one Coke.”

We were sitting near the jukebox and had to talk above the music. “You know, I’m beginning to like this little town of yours.” He looked at Jack and me as if expecting an answer. “Yes, sir, it’s
a pretty good little town when you get to know the people. It’s not like the big city, of course, and you can’t have the fun you can in some towns, but it’s like I always say—if you want fun, you’ve got to make it yourself.”

“You’re right there,” Jack assented. “I know I’ve always had a good time here.”

“I met an old fraternity brother of mine the other day in Waupun and I said to him, ‘You know, if I had a wife and six kids and nowhere else to go there is nowhere I would rather live than Fond du Lac,’” and Martin guffawed loudly. But Jack didn’t laugh with him and neither did I. Talking about your home town is like talking about your own mother.

Lorraine was restless and excused herself, going into the powder room. Martin turned to me, “That sister of yours is the greatest one for fixing up. Everytime you look at her it’s prink, prink. I tell her sometimes she’s going to wear her face right off with that powder puff. Another beer, Jack?” He was trying hard to be pleasant now. I almost liked him.

When Lorraine came back she was freshly lipsticked, with her hair fluffed out, and her heels clicked sharply on the floor. “Come on, Martin, let’s go now.”

He turned in his chair and looked her squarely in the face, saying very deliberately and a little too loudly, “Let’s go! We just got here, didn’t we? We’ve got about twenty minutes to wait until the floor show starts and you want to go already!”

“I know, Martie,” she answered coyly, her lips pouted, “I
know we just got here, but I want to go. Come on!” and she smiled at him. Sometimes Lorraine talks as if she were sucking sugar lumps.

He drank down the rest of his beer and looked at us, sighing in mock exasperation. “It’s like that all the time. Just when we get where there is people and fun it’s ‘Let’s go! Let’s go!’” and he squeaked out an imitation of Lorraine. “To hear her talk you’d think she
had
somewhere to go!”

Jack and I sat in an uncomfortable silence after they had gone. I noticed that Martin had nodded to the two girls in the thin satin blouses as he went out the door. We both knew that he hadn’t been trying to be funny, and it made me curl up inside because it had been my own sister he had been talking to. Jack lit a cigarette, trying to think of something to say.

“Say, why don’t you try a bottle of beer with me, Angie?” he suggested.

“Oh, no! No, thank you, really. I never drink beer.”

“Come on,” he urged. “Just for fun. One bottle won’t hurt you.”

“It would look so awful, though—me sitting here with a beer bottle in front of me. I’d look like a witch or something.”

“All right,” he assented. “I wouldn’t want you to have to have one if you didn’t want to but I just thought you might like it—this once.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I suggested. “You order me a bottle and if I don’t like it you can finish it. Will that be all right?”

“Well, if you want to, Angie … but don’t do it just on account of me.”

“No, no, I really want it. It will be sort of fun, I think.”

“Waiter,” he called. “Make that two bottles of beer this time. And bring us some potato chips to go with it.”

He put his hand very close to mine on the table and looked at me with a warm gratitude in his eyes. It made my cheeks tingling hot and for a moment I forgot what I had been saying. When the waiter brought the beer Jack poured both our glasses. I took a cautious sip and screwed up my face at the flat bitterness. Jack winked at me and I laughed back at him—so much fuss over one bottle of beer. But when he wasn’t looking I pushed the bottle over a little toward his side of the table. A girl can’t feel like a lady with a bottle of beer before her.