One of the few bad moments I had during the six days occurred while we were dancing. The band was playin “Stardust” and we were swaying close together when she looked up at me and said, “You know, Bob, I was just thinking of how many things you’ve taught me. How to swim, and how to dance, and of course you showed me how to be happier than anybody else in the world. It seems like you taught me everything.”
Every thing but one, I thought, and Lee had to teach her that. I missed a step and almost tripped, and then recovered and went on. I don’t think she noticed.
There was one speck of comfort in it, though, I thought. I noticed that the thing never did get me completely down to the point where I blew up, the way it had that morning by the river. I wondered if I was beginning to get control of it, or whether the ugly shock of it was beginning to wear off with repetition.
I wondered for a moment if that business was the thing she had said she was afraid of, the thing that made her scared to go back. But no, I knew she wasn’t in love with Lee. And as far as anything Lee would do or say—well, after all, he was my brother and we’d have nothing to fear from him.
The only way I could ever account, afterward, for this blindness was just that I didn’t understand how much Lee had changed and was changing.
I didn’t think of Lee and Mary very often those six days. It was too difficult to think of anyone else at all. Once or twice I found myself wondering what was happening back home and if there was a chance that Sam Harley had scared Lee enough to make him stop and think. I hoped so. I was afraid for him if he ever lost Mary, and I know that he could lose her. It had always been Lee for her ever since we were children, but she had a lot of pride, and someday he might hand her more than that pride would let her take.
On the last evening we drove far down the island to a long, deserted stretch of beach, and there, just after sunset, we parked the car and gathered driftwood for a fire. When the fire was burning fiercely and throwing sparks into the deepening twilight we changed into our suits, one on each side of the car, and ran down to the water. There was a strong breeze blowing up from the south and the surf was running high, breaking far out on the first bar with a booming thunder that filled and overrode everything in this world we had to ourselves. We went far out and felt the force of it and the salt taste of it in our mouths and I kept close to her always, trying to see the white bathing cap against the seething white of the breakers in the darkness and feeling her come pounding back against me in the pushing force of the sea, the warm smoothness of her body against me for an instant and then sliding past in the confusion of darkness and water, something silken that had brushed against me and was gone. I would plunge after her and catch her in the backwash and we would stand braced against the pull of the outgoing current, laughing, and I would kiss her, tasting the salt on her mouth, and then another toppling sea would loom over us and break and send us sprawling into the churning white.
We went back up the beach to the fire, which had burned down to a bed of red coals. The big log I had put across the middle of it was burned in two and I piled the ends on the embers and the wind fanned them into flame. We got out the rolls and wieners and the long-handled wire fork I had bought at the five-and-ten-cent store, and roasted the wieners over the coals. Afterward we lay back on the yellow robe and watched the wind searching among the embers and sending the sparks flying out across the empty dunes. The beach was dark for miles and we were the only people on a black, wild continent. She had the bathing cap off and the glow of the dying fire highlighted the curls and warmed the smooth lines of her body.
“I wonder if we’ll ever come back to Galveston again, Bob,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “We can come back.”
“I don’t know whether I want to or not,” she said slowly. “Maybe we oughtn’t. Somehow it couldn’t ever be like this again, because nothing could be, and it would be better if we could always remember it like this.”
I didn’t say anything and we turned from looking at the fire, and it was the way it had been that morning at the river when we couldn’t get enough of seeing each other, only this time there was no Lee or the thought of Lee, and after a long time I kissed her and there was a wildness in her like that of the sea running out there in the darkness, a wildness and a fierce urgency that was like nothing I had ever known before. The booming of the surf was a sound we would both hear as long as we lived.
We left at noon the next day and as I drove the car across the causeway she was quiet. She looked back once and when she caught my glance on her she smiled a little but didn’t say anything.
Twenty
It was about ten P.M. When we arrived back in town. Our reception was anything but heartening. When we rolled up to the stop line going into the square, Grady Butler, one of the sheriff's deputies, flagged me. He came over and put his foot on the running board.
“Bob,” he said, “I wish you and that wild-haired brother of yours would get together about this car.”
“What’s the trouble?” I asked.
“Trouble? Why, he comes in the office in the courthouse about three days ago and reports his car stolen. We get the license number and everything and put out pickup notices on it, and then I find out from somebody else that it’s not stolen at all and that you’ve got it. So I jump him about it and he says he don’t remember it, he must have been drunk.”
“Was he?” I asked.
“Drunk? Sure he was. He was drunk both times. I wish you birds would get together. There’s enough headaches in this business without guys like Lee Crane makin’ it worse.”
“O.K.,” I said. “I’m taking the car back to him now and I’ll see if I can’t straighten him out. You haven’t seen him around the last hour or so, have you?”
“No, thank God.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, he’s been on a ring-tailed tear for the past week and I get tired of keeping him out of trouble.”
Somebody behind us began blasting his horn impatiently, so Butler stepped back and waved and we drove on. I was worried as we went out North Elm and didn’t feel any better when we pulled up in front of the old house and found it dark. There was nobody home at all and I wondered where Mary was.
There wasn’t any use in wasting any more time tonight, I thought, so we drove on out to the farm. There was no light in the house across the road when we turned into the driveway, but I hadn’t expected any because it was past Jake’s and Helen’s bedtime.
We stopped under the sweet-gum trees and I turned to Angelina and said, “This is it. We’re home.” She had been very quiet since we had left town. We went up on the porch and when I had opened the door I picked her up and carried her through.
“I’ve been hoping all the way that you’d do that, Bob,” she said simply.
I walked down the hall, still carrying her, feeling my way, and went into the back bedroom. It was hot inside the closed house and absolutely still and the blackness seemed to press in on us.
“Hold me, Bob,” she whispered. “Don’t put me down. I’m scared.”
I could feel her trembling. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said.
“I know it. I’m just nervous, I guess. But something scares me.”
I sat down on the bed and held onto her for a while until the shaking subsided. Then I got up and opened the back door and raised the windows and lit, one of the lamps. She smiled at me, a little shamefaced.
“I don’t know what was the matter. I must be crazy. I won’t be like that any more.”
We went around to all the rooms so she could see them. She had seen the place before, of course, having lived all her life across the Black Creek bottom, but she’d never been inside it. She liked it and was pleased with the furniture I had collected, but there was something subdued in her manner.