Seventeenth Summer (28 page)

“I just want to go as far as those dark bushes, Swede,” I explained, turning round to him. “It all looks so odd in the moonlight and I’ve never walked in a field like that at night before. Don’t you and Dollie want to come?”

“No, thanks,” he answered, his voice slurring, “Dollie and me can be more comfortable right here in the car!”

Jack leaned over to open my door and the thick roadside weeds brushed as high as the running board. I stepped through them carefully and he took my hand to jump the low ditch at the
edge of the road. Puddles from the last rain lay in the hollows, glassy in the moonlight, and the ground on the other side was spongy beneath our feet.

As we ran across the field the ground was bumpy beneath our feet like pastureland and I could hear him breathing hard as we went. Night dew was on the grass, cool and wet about my ankles, and here and there grew clumps of wild field daisies, their petals still open and white in the moonlight. Jack let go my hand and ran ahead. I tried to keep up with him, laughing and panting, stumbling in the darkness while my feet slipped on the wet ground. He didn’t stop till he had reached the trees and waited there till I came panting up to him, my shoes heavy with clay.The trees were farther apart than they had seemed at a distance, with broad, squat, half-stumps in between. I sat down on one of these to rest, and the sides were furred with layers of white fungus that crumbled like paper between my fingers, giving the air a damp, mossy smell like wet, brown leaves. Jack sat down beside me.

From where we sat we could just barely see the car, black and shadowy at the edge of the gravel road with a small red wink of a tail light. No one but Jack would have come out here with me, without even asking why. I guess he
knew
why. We were near the dark clump of bushes I had seen from the car and the leaves were cool against my arm, their undersides wet with dew. I was still panting from running and laughing at the same time, a delicious feeling. The trees around us were old and tall, with thin, straight trunks and leaves that rustled high above us.
Something quick, probably a rabbit, moved in the bushes.

“I’m glad we came out here,” Jack whispered to me. “You can’t really see the moon from inside the car.” I nodded.

A leaf from the bushes brushed my hand and I recognized the touch. Picking one of them I handed it to Jack. “Feel this,” I urged. “Feel how fuzzy it is on the other side. These are probably wild raspberry bushes.”

He rubbed it gently against his cheek. “Oh, yeah,” and his voice was slow with awe. “It feels just how Dollie looks like
she
feels—from looking at her, I mean.” I laughed to myself to hear him.

Between the trees thick weeds grew high, black and secret in the moonlight; everything a different shade of darkness. All around us were muted night sounds as if the trees and bushes were whispering among themselves. Both of us sat listening. “Angie,” he said suddenly, “did you know there is no such thing as sound!”

“What do you mean—no such thing as ‘sound’?”

“Well, I’m not sure if I can explain it to you,” he went on, “but it’s what our teacher told us in science last year. For instance, if you break a balloon or something there really is no sound. There are sound
waves
sent out but unless there are ears—on people, of course—to pick up the vibrations, there is no sound.”

“That hardly sounds right to me,” I puzzled … “I never heard anything like that before.”

“Sure, Angie, and the teacher told us that long ago, in cavemen
times, if those big dinosaurs went crashing through the forest, if there was no one there to hear them, there was no noise at all! Do you see now what I mean?” he asked.

“Maybe I do,” I told him. “But it still doesn’t seem quite right. If the dinosaurs made noise and still it couldn’t be heard, I wonder what happened to it?”

He put his arm around my shoulder. “Now look, Angie, it’s like this. Listen. Say that right now we aren’t here, you and I. Say we’re back in the car with Swede and Dollie or that we’re still out at Pete’s. There’s no one here. There isn’t a single car on that whole stretch of road. All of a sudden one of these trees cracks in the trunk and falls over. There is vibration but there is no sound at all because there is no one to hear it. Now do you see?”

I tried to crowd my thoughts into one small space to concentrate. In my mind I could see the bare field in the moonlight with the dark row of trees standing. It was deadly silent. No sound. No one to hear. Suddenly one of the trees sways a little, its top branches heavy. It sways again and then suddenly it topples over and falls full length on the ground. But it made no noise at all. It was like a feather falling on feathers. But the thought of the tall tree so silent in the darkness was eerie, almost terrifying, and I shivered. Jack’s arm tightened round my shoulder, “Cold?” he asked. I shook my head.

I knew Swede and Dollie would be wondering where we were, what was taking us so long, but there were things I wanted to talk to Jack about. I had wanted to talk to him for a
long time. For months there had been something inside of me, a disturbed, excited feeling as if there was something I should do at once but I was never sure just what it was. I thought Jack would understand. It was such a quick, urgent feeling and yet all very bewildering. I felt that I should learn to dance better; that I should know how to drive a car; that I should read more. It seemed suddenly as if I had never done anything in my life—that everything was still ahead—and I wanted to know if Jack felt some of the same eager restlessness. I wanted to know but I didn’t know how to ask.

“Jack,” I ventured, “tell me something. Don’t you wish sometimes that you had studied more in school? That you hadn’t wasted so much time?”

His answer was hesitant. “I don’t know as I’d say that, Angie. I had a pretty good time.”

He didn’t understand what I meant so I tried again. “But, Jack, don’t you feel sometimes that you should have read more—that you’ve wanted your mind to be bigger so you could understand what goes on? You know what I mean …” He was sitting looking out into the darkness, hardly listening.

I wanted him to understand so badly, I almost shook him. “Jack, Jack, listen to me. This is important. I got it figured that I could be a smart girl and a smooth girl if I wasn’t scared of so many things—if I didn’t spend so much time wondering why I’m not what I’m not. I could be as smooth as Jane Rady if I stopped thinking about myself, don’t you know that, Jack?

“You and I could start now to work on ourselves so we would be, maybe, great people when we grow up. I could brush my hair every night and you could read a lot so we would really be something. Do you see what I mean, Jack? Everything can be so wonderful if you work at it….”

Somehow I still hadn’t said what I wanted to say and the words tripped over each other, trying to sort out the right ones. “It’s just that I feel we are wasting time. I think we are different from Fitz and Margie and Dollie—and even from Swede. Jack, it seems sometimes that I can’t ever do things ‘enough.’ When I eat, everything tastes so good I can’t get all the taste out of it; when I look at something—say, the lake—the waves are so green and the foam so white that it seems I can’t look at it hard enough; there seems to be something there that I can’t get at. And even when I’m with you, I can’t seem to be with you … enough .” That wasn’t quite what I had meant to say and I let the words trail off awkwardly.

The night was suddenly very quiet except for the wind in the trees and the sound of the crickets singing—a pulsing chant that hung low to the ground. It was a pregnant, breathing silence and the whole field was throbbing with the still mystery of shadows and moonlight. I realized then that Jack hadn’t been listening to me at all. He was watching me and his hand was on mine and his face was very serious in the dim light. His hand was on mine and then I felt the light touch on my wrist that sent a vague stirring through me and then his fingers were warm on my arm. The
night seemed to be waiting, too still. “Jack,” I whispered. “Jack, whatever is the matter with you!”

His voice was low, almost husky. “You know darn well what’s the matter,” he said.

But I didn’t. I really didn’t, and in a few moments I took his hand and we crossed back over the field to the quiet car.

After a while I tried not to count the days. Each night when I went to bed I pretended that I was just going to bed and nothing more; that it didn’t mean marking off another day. I tried not to let myself think, “This is Friday and after this weekend we will have three more and that will be all.” I fixed my dreams so carefully that I woke each morning almost believing that this was the beginning of the summer and not the end.

But even if it was only August there were already signs of summer’s dying everywhere. The poppies in the garden that had been tousled pink blossoms only a few weeks before were now full-blown and hung heavy with busting seed pods, scattering the seed like little black bugs to the earth. The corn leaves dried in the sunlight and rustled with wind, while the fine, silken hair that hung from the ears shriveled, tobacco-brown. And I knew by the tomatoes that summer was ending. The vines sprawled luxuriantly over the earth still, but the runt tomatoes ripened before they were full-grown, not trusting the sun to shine many weeks longer. Small, white-cocooned webs of spider eggs appeared on the undersides of the clapboards of the house. There was a new
ripe lushness about everything; not a fresh, bright greenness as in early summer but a full, heavy maturity that made everything look overripe and basking in the sun.

Jack noticed the change, too, and drove me out to look at the lake one afternoon. Dog days had come and the lake was thick with sea grass, rolling toward us in full, lazy, green swells. Water birds, with white arcs of wings, swooped low, reveling in the warmth of the air. It was almost impossible to feel sad. There was too much hidden excitement in the weather itself.

And something had changed in me too. What in the beginning had been a quick, breathless thrill was now a warm, beating gratitude that bordered on contentment. A strange, bewildering contentment. My feelings toward Jack were different now, fuller, richer. I was no longer afraid to look into his eyes or to touch his hand when I talked to him. I felt much older than I had in June and just being with him made my lips feel softer, smoother.

One night we went to the Fond du Lac County Fair—Fitz, Margie, Jack, and I. The fair is an annual county event and stirs our town for days. Weeks before, black and white banners had been hung low over Main Street, announcing the coming horse races and stock show, and little boys stuck handbills on front porches, printed with splashy ads for the carnival features and sideshows. All the rest of the year the buildings at the fairgrounds stood drab and empty, but for the week of the fair they were sprayed with whitewash and little red and blue flags shot up along the roofs and around the doorways. For several days before, the
rutted roads that led from the main highway into the fairgrounds were lined with truckloads of vegetables and noisy livestock, and farmers led in their prize horses, the tails braided stumpy with ribbon and the manes shiny. The whole fairgrounds reeked with an earthy, animal smell.

We went to the fair the third night after its opening and it was as crowded as a dance floor with people bumping and jostling, shoving along. Fitz and Margie were waiting for us just inside the gates. It was still early so we decided to leave the Ferris wheel till later and walk by the sideshow tents, looking at the gaudy-colored posters and watching the barkers and the come-on girls first. We saw people craning their necks in front of the Hawaiian tent show and we stopped too. It was advertised as the largest show on the grounds and the barker wore a bright-red shirt and a flower
lei
twisted around his neck. There was a bare wooden stage with two hairy-stemmed palm trees on each end and four girls in the center, swaying gently, disinterestedly. Fitz whistled loudly between his teeth and Margie nudged him in the ribs, giggling and whispering. Other people crowded around us, shoving and pushing until we four stood almost at the edge of the platform. The barker shouted and pounded on the ticket box till the crowd grew larger, pressing in a gaping semicircle all around the tent, while the four girls waited, talking among themselves and staring down at the faces staring up at them. When the crowd got large enough one of them brought a ukelele from the tent, plunking at it tunelessly, singing as she played while the others twisted and swayed in a
loose-hipped hula, coarse grass skirts swishing noisily as they moved. They all wore flat tennis shoes and no stockings and their legs were red with welts of mosquito bites.

The blond dancer on the end was younger than the rest and she kept watching Jack with a slow, easy smile as she danced. “That one on the end’s got a case on you,” Fitz remarked, his hand over his mouth. The girl on the stage whispered something to the dancer next to her and they both looked at Jack, laughing and thinking with their eyes.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said suddenly, pushing his way through the crowd behind him.

But Fitz caught his arm. “Naw, wait, Jack,” he urged. “This is good. I want to see what happens.”

Just then the girl with the ukelele twanged out a weak finale and the dancers turned to troop in under the flap of the tent. “Only ten cents for each and every one of you. Women and children alike,” the barker shouted, slamming down the tickets. “Ten cents for the biggest musical dancing show on the grounds! Show going on inside at once—only ten cents. Get your tickets here!”

Just as she turned to go in the tent, the blonde called back to Jack, “Come on in, boy. For kids like you it’s free—all of it.” She looked at him a moment with her queer, easy smile and followed the others inside.

“Wow!” Fitz exploded. “You’ve got it on the ball! I want to see the rest of this!”

“We’re not going in,” Jack said, tersely.

“Come on,” Margie pleaded in a sugar voice. “This is the first thing we’ve run across tonight that’s really been fun. Come on, Angie, tell him to come on in. This is good.”