Jolly Read online

  “No. I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. Why? What’s the matter?”

  She reached for his plate to stack on her own. “I don’t know.” She tk’d her tongue and repeated, “I don’t know. Something. I’m worried.”

  Jolly threw down his napkin. “What’s there about him to worry over? He hasn’t been home ten minutes his whole life, it seems to me. Not when anybody needed him or wanted him. He’s been here a whole damn—a whole darn week and I get about a half hour.” He scraped his chair back from the table.

  “Don’t get on your high horse, Jolliff. If Jamie doesn’t want to talk, he’s got reason. You let him alone, you hear?”

  “Let him alone! Look, I don’t want his whole crazy life, I just want—Oh, forget it. I don’t want anything.” He sat on the sofa to tie his shoe laces.

  “Where you going?”

  “Out.”

  “In this heat? Seems to me you’d love and appreciate a nap today, what with all the galavantin’ you been doing lately. And haven’t you got some last-minute school work to do?”

  “I’ll do it later.” At the door he turned. “Mom, you don’t know where he’s staying, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  He closed the front door and jammed his hands in his pockets and faced the proposition of walking to Doogle’s in the heat. He wouldn’t worry about anything at all, not until he got to the drugstore and cooled off, and then he could use the telephone there if he decided to.

  Cortez wasn’t up to much early on a Sunday afternoon. The streets were nearly empty of traffic, except for a few cars headed out Sierra Road toward the country club and another afternoon of golf or bridge or gin and tonic. The front shades were pulled in most of the houses, and even the trees drooped and nodded as if they also would take an hour or two off from growing.

  A green Ford convertible raked down the hill past Jolly, its nose dipped forward, pipes popping. “Fingers!” Guppy called, and the five or six bodies laughed by, nothing but bare skin showing above the edge of the car, on their way to the lake.

  Jolly waved. “Hello, Hero.” He paused to watch them out of sight. The seniors had finished their exams the week before, and Guppy was graduating at last. He could well spend the day (and the night) at the lake in celebration. He had just been awarded the healthiest scholarship of anyone in his class to play football for the university. On the strength of that and his size, and the footwork of his coaches, he would be given a diploma the following week along with the eggheads who couldn’t afford a raked green convertible with twin pipes and twin spots and mirrors and green-and-white-striped leather upholstery. Just how Guppy came to afford the car wasn’t certain, although a number of people had wondered, briefly. It was doubtful his ten-year-widowed mother could have bought it for him, what with only her six women tenants in the cupolaed and turreted white house that stood opposite the old grammar school. She had had the house chopped up into small apartments after her husband died, and she had tried to lighten the rooms and cheer the naturally morose exterior with white paint and pots of red geraniums. But the geraniums in the window boxes seldom lived because over there, that close to Maricopa Street and the noisy playground, it was hard to get genteel tenants who would give care to geraniums. Mostly the ones who came to live there were secretaries and beauty operators. They were all flighty-restless, apt to move closer to downtown after three or four months, so that a person couldn’t depend on having any tenants at all except for the two over-thirty women who taught across the street and shared the expense of one apartment and whom she would not have had back at all this year, because they sometimes acted strangely, if she could have picked and chosen.

  Guppy helped around the place, mending stairs, or mowing the lawns, or painting—the things a man would have to be hired to do next year when he left for the university. She had worried some the last couple of years about her son in the house with those flighty-restless girls, and she had tried to see that things that needed fixing in their rooms got done during the day. If there was something at night, a leaky faucet, or a stuck toilet or window, she went along, too, and chatted about the geraniums or the cost of plumbing. With the schoolteachers it was different, of course. They were finicky about things in their apartment, more so, probably, than they had a right to be, not paying any more rent than they paid, and they had the only keys to the lock that had been changed on their door (heaven alone knew what she’d do if she ever really had to get in there), which meant that Guppy—Benjy—would have to go up there at night if anything needed fixing, when he would sooner be with his own friends, but then, after he had unstuck their toilet, or whatever it was, they would help him with his homework, and she could go on to bed more than a little thankful that the boy wasn’t out chasing around town.

  When the two teachers told Mrs. Gusperson that they wanted to buy the green car for Guppy for graduation, she was bewildered and touched. It wasn’t, after all, a really new car, they had explained. She wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but maybe a boy who didn’t have any father and who had to help around the house instead of working for money deserved a little something more than she could provide, and, well, if they really wanted to do it, she guessed they would anyway, whether she had anything to say about it or not. But she thought she’d be able to have their apartment done over with that blue paper and new curtains this summer while they were gone.

  Jolly and Guppy had developed an unspoken mutual respect since Guppy had learned that Jolly lately listened when he talked (and could diagram two or three senior sentences in the hall between classes), and Jolly had learned that whatever he might not be, Guppy was constant. Guppy was proud of the green Ford and embarrassed by it at first, until he had one day tried incoherently to explain its reason for being to Jolly, who hadn’t asked, and found he couldn’t, but more than that he realized for the first time that even if he could speak as well as he wished he could, even if he explained the whole crazy thing, it wouldn’t make sense.

  Jolly cut across the plaza on the courthouse square. Several families of early tourists who didn’t know of the good picnic spots were eating hot dogs and drinking pop and sleeping, their children flitting over the fresh lawns like bits of bright paper in the wind.

  He stopped beside the goldfish pond, black-railed more for the safety of the fish than the children. From the fountain, green and slime-coated, the water splashed sporadically, keeping the fish in a state of constant agitation. Jolly watched for Old Whitey, a giant by goldfish standards and bleached white from age and poor sunlight, to come to the edge of the pond.

  “There you are, you old scavenger,” Jolly laughed. “And I haven’t got anything for you.” He tore a match from its packet and struck it. When it blazed he dropped it directly upon the fish, who seemed to hang suspended on an invisible wire just beneath the surface. The fish didn’t flinch as the match hissed onto the water. “Can’t fool you, can I,” Jolly said.

  He left the pond and stopped to gaze at the bronze statue of Teddy Roosevelt presumably charging San Juan Hill, sword drawn, his horse’s hooves pawing the air, its neck arched as if it had just been struck in the nose by a musket ball, or whatever the enemy fired at San Juan Hill. The city fathers were once at the point of removing the statue at the insistence of a tourist, something of an equestrian expert, if not a sculptor, but they hesitated at the last moment for two reasons; one, what do you do with a four-ton statue when you have removed it? and two, about forty flesh-and-blood horsemen rode in from the country in the style best reminiscent of a time a hundred years previous when city fathers were allowed to survive at all only by luck. Given time, the tourists’ children would pull the whole thing down around their heads anyway.

  Jolly passed along the final lane of the plaza, the one that received the most generous share of the afternoon sun. On the benches in two’s and three’s sat all the old men of the town who gathered there (from where, no one knew exactly) each Sunday to watch the town. They hushed their talk
as Jolly walked by and only tapped their canes, impatient for him to be gone. He pulled out his cigarette pack and after choosing one let the package drop, as if by accident, onto the sidewalk between the two rows of benches.

  “They’ll fight like hell over those,” he chuckled. He stepped from the curb to cross over to Doogle’s.

  “Did you want something?” the straggle-haired girl asked in a tone that said “You have a nerve.”

  “I did and I still do. A Coke and some cigarettes. Luckies.”

  “You get the weeds over yonder,” she said, dipping a glass in the ice bin.

  At the over-yonder counter Mr. Doogle himself presided, nervous and gold rimmed. His fidgets were constant, as if he feared some government inspector was about to bring the sky crashing down for selling cigarettes, beer, and prophylactics to minors.

  “Luckies,” said Jolly.

  “You eighteen, young man?”

  “Of course. Would I ask, otherwise?”

  “Well, it pays to be safe. Cain’t never tell about you young hoodlums. Seems to me, tho’ I might be wrong, that eighteen gets younger about ever’ year. Here y’are. That’ll be twenty-four cents.”

  Before he finished his Coke, Jolly swung from the stool, and balancing an ash tray, the Coke and his cigarettes, he encased himself in the phone booth. Once settled, he considered the probability of getting through to Luke. It wasn’t likely there was anything he’d care to hear Luke’s mother say. He decided on the code ring.

  “Number please,” said the metallic voice.

  “129, please.” He waited until he heard the number ring once, then hung up. He watched the clock above the door of the drugstore until the red second hand had swept around twice.

  “Number please.”

  “129, please.”

  “I’ll ring again.”

  This time Luke answered promptly. “Jolly?” he said.

  “Yeh. How are things on death row?”

  “Sweet Jesus, was my old lady mad. She’s been raising hell since three this morning. She finally taken a pill and went to bed.”

  “Can you get out?”

  “Not a chance. She won’t sleep forever.”

  “Did you see what I saw in church this morning?” Jolly asked and hoped he hadn’t.

  “No. Something?”

  “I’ll say. They’re new. And is she ever! About five feet five, blond, and everything.”

  “How’d I miss that? What about the other, ah, features?” If it is possible to drool over the Bell System, Luke was.

  “They’re all in place. I know her last name, but how am I going to find out where she lives?”

  Luke laughed. “She got a phone?”

  “How the hell should I know? They’re new, I told you.”

  “Look, moron. You ever thought of asking the operator do they have a phone?”

  Jolly said, “That’s an idea.” And then he said, “Say, Ass-Hole Buddy, since you can’t get out, how about me borrowing the Goose?”

  “Sure. I’ll go down the back stairs and leave the keys in it. Rather, I’ll wait in the garage for you. I’d like to hear more about this.”

  “OK. Wish me luck,” said Jolly and hung up. He deposited another dime and dialed 0.

  “Operator,” said a voice, identical in nasal tone with the first.

  “You got a number for Van Dearen? That’s D-e-a-r-e-n.” He listened while the operator rustled pages.

  “Is that on Paseo Redondo?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jolly said, noting that that address would mean the Mountain Knolls area, something he hadn’t anticipated.

  “That number is 4112,” said the voice.

  Jolly waited for his dime to return and studied the bottom of his Coke glass, possibly in hopes there would be emblazoned the words he would use if he called 4112—and if 4112 answered.

  He decided against the phone call and opened the booth. “Here you are, girl of my dreams,” he said, setting his glass and the dime on the counter a dozen feet from where he had first sat. The waitress pushed a tired lock of hair back from her eyes and slid off the ice cream cabinet. Now she would have two wet circles to wipe off the counter.

  Jolly approached Luke’s from the alley and found him leaning against the back of the row of garages.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. Well?” Luke wore his quizzical expression.

  “Well?” Jolly mocked. “I didn’t call her.”

  “She have a phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “You some kind of a nut? Whyn’t you call her, chicken?”

  “I found out her address—sort of. I think I’ll just drive out that way and look around,” Jolly said. Then he added, “Mountain Knolls.”

  “Mountain Knolls! Jeez, you can pick ’em. I bet there’s a law against cars as old as the Goose up there.”

  Jolly laughed. “Probably. You got the keys?”

  Luke hesitated. “Yeh, I got ’em. But I don’t know if I oughta let you go without your old dad. Think you can handle things?”

  “What’s there to handle in the middle of the goddam afternoon?” Jolly took the keys Luke handed him. He inspected the Blue Goose critically. “When in hell did you wash it last?”

  “Well, Your Royal Patookus, I didn’t know it was gonna mix with no damn Cadillacs or I’d a washed it. Jeez.”

  Jolly backed the coupe from the garage and then drove into the alley. Luke called, “You know what I always say; when in doubt—”

  “Whip it out,” Jolly finished, and the Blue Goose clattered down the alley.

  TEN

  JOLLY shifted into second gear as he drove through the flagstone pillars, and the car pointed up the first short hill. Mountain Knolls was not really in the mountains at all, but in the thick pine woods that edged the town on the south. The area was laced with small dirt roads that wound and circled and intercepted one another in what seemed an obvious (and well nigh successful) attempt to keep outsiders outsiders. The roads were unequalled for playing ditch ’em, to the immense displeasure of the residents, who had chosen country living partly in the belief that they would escape the wracking noises of the city only to find that the worst of the noises raced and honked and raised billows of dust before their very front doors every night. Many of the residents were only summer folks who could afford to escape the heat of the southern counties for a month or two during the year. The houses themselves, separated by several acres of unkempt natural pine growth, were studies in rustic architecture. One after the other vied for authenticity and number of screened porches. They were built only of native pine boards or logs and had unnecessarily steep roofs as if the snow could be expected to fall in greater quantities there.

  Once over the first hill, Jolly divided his attention between keeping the car on the road and peering for the proper wooden arrow that would designate Paseo Redondo. When he was at last on the right road he shifted his gaze to the houses, trying to choose the one most likely to conceal a girl who wore a white sailor hat.

  Before long he recognized the sedan he had seen the Van Dearens drive that morning. It sunned itself in splotches of light and dark before the front steps of a house.

  “Hey!” a voice yelled.

  Jolly slammed on the brakes, and the small car slid to the edge of the curve, its bumper just resting against a high gray boulder. He heard a peal of laughter encircle the car. He looked atop the boulder.

  There she was.

  There she was sitting above him, laughing, her legs drawn up into her arms, her chin on her knees. Jolly wondered at their brownness. Her hair hung long and entirely straight on either side of her face. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said. There she was. He stepped out of the car. She watched him climb toward her. When he was part way there he stopped, his two hands leaning against the boulder.

  “Good thing you yelled,” he said.

  Her laughter trembled. “Yes. You sure weren’t looking at the road.”

  Jolly stepped up two mor
e foot-holds. His eyes were level with hers as she lay the side of her face on her knees. There were yellow flecks among the brown of her eyes just the color of her skin below the white shorts she wore.

  “Hi,” he said, breathless not from the climb.

  “You said that,” she said. Jolly watched the bridge of her nose wrinkle when she laughed, stirring the freckles that paced across her cheeks. “My name is Dogie.”

  “Dogie? That’s a calf.” He waited a moment for her to explain. She did not. “I’m Jolly Osment,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said and then, “Aren’t you going to ask my last name?”

  “I know that already.”

  She lifted her head, and most of her hair, the color of April laburnums, fell down her back. It was her turn to wait for an explanation.

  “I asked,” he said.

  “Do you live here? In Cortez?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Have you come here in the summers before? I’ve never seen you.” It was the truth, but he was seeing her now.

  “No. Will I like it here?”

  I will like you here, thought Jolly. He said, “I hope so. Where you from?”

  “My dad has a ranch down near the border. This is the first summer he’s been willing to leave it.” She unclasped her knees and let her legs stretch down the face of the rock. She lay back on the flat surface. Her head lay on her hands. She watched Jolly’s eyes, which had considerable trouble avoiding the space between her shirt and shorts where a band of brown skin showed. She began to twist a piece of her hair over a finger. She smiled.

  Jolly turned his head on reluctant muscles and lifted his eyes beyond the brown thighs toward a clearing that formed a small valley just visible through the trees. “There’s a nice little pond down yonder,” he said. “With salamanders and frogs and all.”

  “OK,” she said and sat forward. “Let’s go see it.” She gave him her hand to help her get down the granite face. At the bottom she said, “Are we going to drive, or what?”

  “It’s not far,” he said, noticing she hadn’t retrieved her hand and not wanting her to. “Let’s walk.”