Evie nodded, over and over. Agreement welled up inside her like tears, but even saying yes meant breaking into Mrs. Casey’s web of words. “There was always something special about him,” said Mrs. Casey. “Right from when he was born. I felt it. Would you like to see the album?”
“We got to go, Mom,” Drum said. He was standing in the living room doorway, buckling his belt. “Don’t wait up for me.”
“Oh, why do you rush off like this? Bertram, honey, I want you to bring Evie back again, you hear? We just get along like a house afire. I hope you will never be so famous you forget the people who did you a good turn.”
“A good turn, what’s she been telling you? I’m paying her, ain’t I?”
“Not to do all that cutting you didn’t. Can’t any money pay for that. Evie, honey, what do the doctors say?”
“I don’t know,” said Evie.
“Well, you might just inquire. When Bertram leaves this area I expect they could fix you up just like new.”
“Mom, for Lord’s sake,” Drum said.
“Well, she don’t want it all her life, now does she?”
“We better be going,” David said. He stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. “Nice seeing you, Mrs. Casey.”
“Well, hurry back.” And at the door, as she handed Evie the picture in its paper folder, she said, “Don’t be a stranger, Evie, we’ll welcome you just as often as you want to come. Next visit I’ll let you see Bertram in the photo album, you hear?”
“Thank you,” said Evie. She was surprised to feel David’s hand suddenly clasp her elbow as she started down the steps.
She went back often. Drum usually had to be called for on Fridays, and it was Evie who ran up to knock on the door while David waited in the Jeep. “I don’t see how you stand that woman,” he said.
“Why? I think she’s sweet.”
“How can you listen to all that talk? And going on about your forehead and all, how can you put up with that?”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Evie.
She thought that David might even like her now, in an absent-minded way. They had had so many long rides together, with the filling of the silence resting on the two of them — Drum being absent or as good as absent, twanging that one guitar string. Once when they were alone David said, “I’ve been thinking about your forehead. I mean, they’re only white now, the letters. Have you ever thought of wearing bangs?”
“Then no one in the Unicorn would see them,” Evie said.
“Well, no.”
“Don’t you want me to come to the Unicorn any more?”
“No, I was thinking about the rest of the time. People must stare at you a lot. Your friends and them.”
“I don’t have any friends,” said Evie.
“Oh.”
“Only Violet, and she doesn’t stare. And besides, by now I don’t notice. I don’t even see the letters in the mirror, half the time. Sometimes I wonder: Does anybody see them? Or have I just gotten adjusted? Do they come as a shock to strangers still?”
“They do stand out some,” David said.
“A lot?”
“Well, I don’t know—”
“You can tell me, I don’t care. Are they bad?”
“Well, not with bangs they wouldn’t be.”
“I see,” said Evie.
But she still didn’t get around to cutting bangs.
At the end of July a heat wave struck. Crops shriveled, lawn sprinklers ran all day and all night, Clotelia carried a black umbrella to fend off the sun and Violet stopped wearing underwear. “Seems like this summer will just go on forever,” people said. But Evie thought of the heat wave as the peak of the season, a dividing point after which summer would slide rapidly downhill toward fall. And how could she go back to school? She had never planned past August. She had cleaned out her locker with the feeling that she was leaving for good, and the thought of going back to the rigid life of winter smothered her.
Lately her rapid-fire questions to Drum had slackened off, grown easygoing. “I suppose you’ll be playing at a party tomorrow,” she would say, too hot and lazy even to add a question mark. All Drum had to answer was, “Mmm” and lapse into silence again. But the thought of summer’s ending came to her one Friday night at the Unicorn. Drum was speaking out: “Was it you I heard crying?” “Yes!” someone shouted. But Evie hadn’t been listening. She didn’t even know what song he was on. Then she was riding home in the Jeep, picking absently at a seam in his guitar. Drum jerked it away from her. His face was turned to the window, only the smooth line of one cheek showing. What had happened to all her spring plans? Things were no different from the very first night.
She changed her tempo. She concentrated on Drum alone, running a race with time, which she pictured as a hot, dark wind. “Why do you speak out in songs? Oh, you’re going to say you don’t know, but you could tell me what started it. Was it by accident? Did you just want to give a friend a message or something?”
“I forget,” Drum said.
“Think. When was the first time you did it?”
“Oh, well, the picnic song, I reckon. That’s right. It was too short. I tossed in extra lines, speaking out, like, just the pictures in my mind. Then a girl told me it was a good gimmick.”
“What girl? Do I know her?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Nothing you speak out is connected,” Evie said. “How can so many pictures come to your mind at once?”
“I don’t know.”
She noticed that people in the Unicorn had stopped staring at her. No one whispered about her; no one stood up to get a better look. They craned their necks around her in order to see the musicians. Sooner or later David would notice too. She dreaded his firing her. As if she could change anything by beating him to the draw, she came right out with the news herself one evening when they were alone. “People are not whispering when I walk in nowadays,” she told him.
“I saw.”
“Does that mean I should stop coming?”
“Well, let me see what Drum says.”
She knew what Drum would say.
Then next Friday night when David picked her up, she told him the entire plot of a movie without giving him time for a single word. When the plot was finished she analyzed it, and when that was finished she told him Clotelia’s life story. By then they had picked up Drum and arrived at the Unicorn. Neither Drum nor David had had a chance to say she was fired. It will be afterwards, she thought, when we are riding home. All during the show she sat memorizing the cold smell of beer, the texture of her netted candle-vase and the sight of Drum Casey tossing his hair above her as he sang. After that night it would all be lost, a summer wasted.
But on the ride home they had other things to talk about. “You hear the news?” Drum asked her. Evie only stared. Drum never began conversations.
“We’re going to a night club in Tar City. A man came looking for me, all the way to the Unicorn, hired me for a two-week run. I thought it would never happen.”
“This is the beginning, now,” David said. “Didn’t I tell you? A genuine night club where they serve setups. From here on out we’ll be heading straight up.”
“But what about the Unicorn?” Evie asked.
“Oh, we’ll take two weeks off. It’s all set.”
“And may not be back,” said Drum. “I tell you, after this I’m going to buy me some new singing clothes. Spangly.”
“Well, congratulations,” said Evie, but no one heard her. They were discussing lights and money and transportation.