Jolly Read online

  Mandy jiggled the coffee pot and lifted the lid. She held it under the faucet and let water run slowly down through the percolator holes over the old grounds. She set it on the three-burner gas plate and lit a fire.

  “OK, drowned rat,” she said. She swooped the boy from the floor and held him high, at arm’s length. “Let’s see what can be done about your condition.”

  The baby laughed, and his blue eyes became only dark slits above his fat cheeks.

  TWELVE

  ON TUESDAY evening, Jolly sat in the downstairs office of the Meaders Mortuary awaiting Luke, whose ablutions even for a wiener roast were painstaking and slow. Jolly thumbed backwards through old issues of The Saturday Evening Post and watched George Meaders studying a huge chart on his desk.

  “It’ll rain, you know,” said Mr. Meaders to the chart.

  “I know,” said Jolly. He traded the magazine for another, turned it over and started from the back. “It always does at a picnic or anything.”

  Mr. Meaders refolded part of the chart and opened a different square. “Where you boys going?”

  “Badger Creek, I guess. I don’t know.”

  The sun just setting in the clouds threw across the room that peculiar bright light that comes only before a rain. It was brighter yet less colorful than the ordinary setting sun. George Meaders swung his chair so that his back was to the window, then held up the chart, browned along each crease from years of folding and unfolding.

  “What’s that?” asked Jolly.

  “This? It’s a map of the cemetery. Look.” Jolly stood and walked to the desk behind Mr. Meaders’ chair. “See these little boxes?”

  “Are those the graves?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are those the names of the people buried in them?” He leaned closer over Mr. Meaders’ shoulder. “Do you have the names of all the people buried out there?”

  “Yep. See there? There’s the mausoleum.”

  The mausoleum looked surprisingly insignificant on paper. Just a larger square with four rows of names printed in tiny close letters. Jolly’s glance circled around the larger square. “Which way is west?” he asked.

  “Here.” Jolly followed Mr. Meaders’ finger, but a fold in the chart obstructed the squares close to the mausoleum. “These blank places are plots that haven’t been sold yet. And these blue numbers tell us in the cross file if the plot is owned but not occupied,” Mr. Meaders chuckled.

  They heard Luke clattering down the stairs from above. Jolly watched as Mr. Meaders refolded the chart.

  “Well, patookus, you ready?” Luke came into the office. Despite his lengthy preparations he wore faded Levis over which his shirttail flapped in back, and his hair hung straight to one side of his forehead.

  “I been ready for half my life.” Jolly saw Mr. Meaders place the chart in a wooden filing cabinet, slide it shut and lock it. Then he locked the other filing drawers and his desk.

  “I’d advise you two to get home at a reasonable hour,” said Mr. Meaders. “Your mother won’t take kindly to another all-night spree,” he said to Luke.

  “We’ll be in early,” Luke winked to Jolly, “and we should be home not long after.”

  “Get the hell outa here,” said George Meaders.

  “Dad? Can we use the big car?” Luke asked.

  “What’s the matter with yours now?” He rubbed the sides of his nose at the bridge with his thumb and fingers, under his glasses.

  “Nothing’s the matter with it,” said Luke. “It’s just crowded, you know, with four people and all.” He knew his father would make only a token objection.

  “All right,” sighed Mr. Meaders. “Only we’ve got a funeral in the morning. I want that car washed before ten, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Luke, and the two boys scrambled out the back door toward the garages.

  “Where?” asked Luke. The black car dipped from the alley onto the street.

  “The girls,” said Jolly. “Dogie got all the wieners and crap.”

  “Dogie. With a name like that she must be something,” Luke said.

  Jolly smiled. “She is.” And then he repeated, “She is.”

  “This I gotta see.”

  “You can see all you want. Just keep your goddam meat hooks to yourself.”

  “I promise. At least tonight,” Luke laughed. “I expect to have my hands very full tonight.”

  “Yeh, Babe Wooten. Couldn’t you find anybody else? She and Dogie are about as much alike as two swowflakes, for chrissake.”

  “Boy, I keep tellin’ ya. You gotta keep the fire warm.”

  “But a wiener roast! Babe’s not quite the type, you know.” Jolly pointed to the stone-pillared entrance to Mountain Knolls.

  Luke laughed. “I’m only interested in roasting one certain wienie tonight.” The car shifted to a lower gear and began to climb the first hill. The scent of the air changed perceptibly as the road delved among the close-standing pines. The air was sharper and carried a stronger hint of rain. To the right the trees stood darker, their green turned gray against patches of the orange sky.

  “Beautiful sunset,” said Jolly, thinking that she would be seeing it and exclaiming it, too.

  “Yeh. Where the hell do I go now?” asked Luke. He stopped the car at a point where three roads diverged on their own and wound out of sight.

  Jolly brought his attention back to the roads. “There,” he said, pointing. “It’s not far now.” He leaned forward in the seat, his forearm on the dash, and watched for the house. He hadn’t remembered that it took so long to get there from the main road. “There!” he said. “There it is.”

  “Jeez. How the hell you get up that driveway?” Luke asked, but he turned the car toward the house anyway, and as the front rose sharply he stepped hard on the accelerator and the big car spun its wheels and lifted deep-throated up to the flat place before the house.

  There she was.

  Before they had opened the car doors there she was coming down the steps, her arms encircling a huge cardboard box, her face partly hidden by it. Her laughter came before her.

  Jolly reached her at the bottom of the steps and took the box. “I thought you’d never get here,” she said, and he was startled to see that she hadn’t changed in two days. The gold flecks in her eyes still almost matched her hair, but a shade darker, and the freckles still moved when she laughed.

  He wanted to say “I’d have been here a thousand hours ago if I had my way.” He said, “What the heck you got in this box? It weighs about a ton.”

  Her laughter, which sort of hung around on the edges all the time, came back into focus. “Just all the things you said to get,” she said. “Are you Luke?” she asked, turning to him.

  “Oh. Sorry. Luke, this is Dogie,” said Jolly. He glanced at Luke’s face. What he saw there both pleased him (Luke liked her) and displeased him (Luke liked her).

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hello,” said Luke. Jolly controlled a quick angry impulse to comment on Luke’s sappy face. Instead he plunked the box into Luke’s arms.

  “Here,” he said. And to her he said, “You ready? You better wear a jacket or something. It’ll get cold if it rains.”

  “OK. I have to tell Mother I’m leaving.” She ran back up the steps and slammed the screen door.

  Jolly heard a low whistle behind him. He turned. Luke leaned against the car, still holding the cardboard box. “Jesus Christ,” he spoke reverently.

  “Well?” said Jolly.

  “Not bad. Not bad at all,” grinned Luke. “You wanta drive?”

  “Hell, no, I don’t want to drive. If you’re driving you got at least one hand occupied.”

  “What a way to treat an old buddy,” sighed Luke and turned to open the back door of the car. He placed the box on the floor and shut the door. He reached one hand into his pants pocket and held it with the other hand while he drew out a nickel. “I’ll flip you.”

  Jolly extended the middle finger of his right hand. �
�Screw you, friend,” he said. “And no trades.”

  “But Babe’s a sure thing,” insisted Luke, good-natured but willing to be serious.

  “Yeh? I thought you said after she’d had your fancy equipment she’d be ruined for anybody else.” The screen door slammed. “Knock it off, now, for craps-sake.”

  “We’re off!” she said. Jolly stepped forward and took her hand deliberately and led her to the back door of the car. “We’ll swing by for Luke’s girl and then we’re ready,” he said.

  Dogie stopped briefly. “Gee. This is the biggest car I ever saw. You going to ride all alone up there, Luke?” she asked and stepped into the car.

  “Looks like,” said Luke, sliding into the front seat. “Temporarily.”

  While Luke backed the car around and got it headed down the steep driveway, Jolly planned what subtle moves it would take to get his arm around her shoulders or her hand in his. Before he braved either she clasped his wrist with her hand lying in his. She would always surprise him, he decided; in fact, she was a surprise.

  An hour later Luke stopped the car beside one of the cleared camping areas at Badger Creek. In front the headlights shone across a low stone grill and a Forest Service garbage can, pushing the new darkness back over the little silent stream that darted black and silver.

  “This OK?” asked Luke, disengaging his arm and lifting it, crooked, from over Babe’s shoulders. Her head rose into full view in the light. “Cripes. This is really out in the boon-docks, ain’t it,” she said and stretched.

  “It’s wonderful,” said Dogie, peering in all directions as if to pierce the dark. Jolly felt a wave of excitement pass from her hand to his.

  “Fine,” said Jolly. “Let’s get with it.” He opened his door and reached to lift out the cardboard box. “We have to get a fire going first. Hey, you two,” he addressed the front seat, “knock it off. If you want to do something, gather firewood.”

  Babe and Luke giggled from the front seat and separated. “You guys got any beer?” she asked. Jolly left Luke to smooth over that one and led the way to the stone grill. Dogie walked beside him, if you could call that walking. She very nearly skipped.

  “It’s perfect,” she said. “Where do you get the wood?”

  “We’re in a forest, crazy,” said Jolly.

  “Can you build a fire?”

  “Sure. But, before you ask, not by rubbing two sticks together.”

  She laughed and it dimmed the artificial light. “Weren’t you a Boy Scout?” she said.

  “Not a very high-grade one. I never could see why you had to rub sticks together when you could buy enough matches for a dime to burn down the whole damn forest. Excuse me.” He set the box beside the fireplace.

  “You wouldn’t make a very good Indian,” she said.

  “So who wants to be an Indian?” He took her hand and they walked toward the trees where there would be dry limbs and pine needles for the fire.

  “Yes,” she pursued the topic, “but how would you keep warm if you were an Indian?”

  “Just like the rest of them around here. Wine.” He picked up a small limb and used it like a cane. “Or I would get my squaw to whip me up a blanket on her spinning wheel.”

  “Loom.”

  “What?”

  “Loom. You make blankets on a loom,” she said. Then she said, “I think.”

  He laughed. “OK. Here, make yourself useful.” He handed her two small limbs. “At this rate it’ll be midnight before we get a fire going.”

  She followed behind him holding out her arms to cradle the sticks he handed her. “It’s getting pretty dark in here, isn’t it?” she said, her eyes searching among the pines.

  “Afraid of Indians?” he said. He walked on, bending now and then to collect firewood. “You’re more apt to find a coyote or a bobcat than an Indian. Or a polecat.”

  “Jolly?”

  He turned at the timid sound of her voice. He couldn’t see her face, but her head was silhouetted against the car’s faint lights. He walked the few steps back to her. “Crazy, don’t be afraid,” he said and touched her shoulder. “We’ll go back now.” As they walked he watched her face emerge like morning in the growing light and her mouth began to smile again.

  When the fire was going well Luke switched off the headlights and he and Babe walked to the fire carrying blankets. “Big Chief got-um fire going,” stated Luke.

  Jolly thought that from all appearances his wasn’t the only fire going. He saw Luke surreptitiously adjust himself behind the folded blanket on his arm. “Get some sticks to roast with,” Jolly said.

  Babe tossed her blanket on the ground and sat on it, watching the fire. She turned to Dogie. “I coulda sure used a beer. How about you?” She yanked on the bottom of the sweat shirt that appeared to be her only upper garment.

  “Well,” began Dogie, “I guess—well, I guess we just forgot it.” She looked to Jolly.

  “We got Cokes, Babe. That’ll have to do. Here, you two can spread out these things on that blanket and open the jars and all. As soon as Ponce de Leon gets back with the sticks we’re in business.”

  Luke meandered back into the light, whittling a point on a green stick. He carried another under his arm.

  “Don’t you ever hurry?” Babe called. “God, my stomach’s actually talking, I’m so hungry.” She unscrewed the lid of a jar and drew out a fat dill pickle. She held it between her teeth while she closed the lid.

  “Keep your shirt on,” said Luke, exchanging the stick in his hand for the one under his arm which he then began to strip and whittle.

  “I intend to,” said Babe, chewing the pickle. “Gimme that stick you got finished.” She pierced three wieners with the stick and held them over the flames.

  “Hold them down there near the coals,” said Jolly. “You’ll burn the hell—the heck out of them up there.”

  “Don’t tell me about wienies,” she said, and Luke howled. But she lowered them out of the high flames.

  “Let me roast some,” said Dogie. She took the other stick from Luke and pierced two wieners as Babe had. Her nose wrinkled from the heat of the fire and she held her head back and to one side. “Is this right?” she asked.

  Jolly watched her smile at the fire and watched as Luke bent over her and with his hand on hers readjusted the position of the roasting stick an inch. Luke seemed to notice, too, the flames reflect in her hair and brighten the gold in her eyes as she raised her face to smile at him.

  “God damn!” said Babe as she drew her wieners from the fire. “Don’t them look good.”

  Later, after Babe’s gastronomical appetite was satisfied, and the fire had died to occasional pops and glows, Jolly sat with Dogie on one of the blankets, leaning against the furrowed brown trunk of a pine. He chatted foolishly about the forest, the town, the rain that still threatened—anything to keep her face turned toward his and away from Luke and Babe who lay on their blanket on the other side of the fire, their low-whispered talk interrupted only by Babe’s chuckles and periods of silence.

  “Jolly,” Dogie said, stopping his flow of talk. “When are you going to kiss me?” Her eyes, wide and serious, watched his.

  How do you figure a girl like this? Jolly opened his mouth and closed it, dumbly, like the goldfish in the plaza pond. He laughed shortly. This was the first time a girl had had to ask.

  “I guess I do talk too much,” he said. “How about right now?” He bent to kiss her and felt her lips soft and immobile, inexperienced. He moved his lips experimentally against hers, and they remained soft, yet she did not pull back, and her eyes watched his, curiously.

  “Thank you,” she said when he stopped.

  He moved his arm farther down her shoulder and reached across the front of her waist and pulled her toward him and met her lips again. She moved to him easily but remained relaxed, unresponsive. Jolly drew back his head and studied her face. The gold flecks had brightened, if anything. She seemed to wait for his next move, to be told what she should
do. Jolly rejected the exploratory thought that passed through his mind.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  The idea was ridiculous.

  “No reason,” he said.

  Not with this girl. Not with Dogie.

  “Where are they going?”

  Luke and Babe had picked up their blanket and were walking toward the car, she reaching back to tug at the band of her sweat shirt, he pulling down on his Levis pockets to ease the tightness that had ridden too high. At the car he held the rear door for her to enter then closed it after them.

  “What are they going to do?”

  Jolly thought, if you only knew. He said to her that Luke and Babe were probably tired of the lumpy ground or were cold or something. To change the subject he withdrew his arm from her shoulders and leaned forward on his knees to pitch more wood on the fire. He remained to watch the flames climb quickly over the dry pine wood, brightening the night as they cracked.

  “I like a pine fire,” he said.

  “What?”

  He turned to her. “I said I like a pine fire. Don’t you?”

  She watched him come back to her. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.” She leaned forward a few inches so his arm could encircle her shoulders again. Instead, he asked her if she wouldn’t like a pickle or a toasted marshmallow. A frown passed her face and she smiled, “OK,” she said and leaned back against the tree.

  “OK which?”

  “A toasted pickle,” she said, and her laugh stilled the night insects’ songs.

  Jolly was relieved by her laugh and the orange light that mazurkaed in her hair. “Crazy,” he said.

  All right, maybe. Jolly moved back from the fire again. Dogie’s eyes watched his even as he knelt and took her face in his two hands, pressing the orange light against her skin. Her lips began to mimic each inquest of his. Because her eyes still watched his, he moved his face so that it rested beside hers, by her neck. Whenever his arms pressured her she moved forward to him. He felt her back stiffen and shiver when his hand stopped over one breast, but because she did not remove it, the hand went on to the buttons of her blue plaid shirt.