“Candy! My God, Candy! She looks like a dream, doesn’t she, Skip?”
Before I could reply or smile or make some condescending gesture they hugged each other, hooked arms and crossed the parlor to the fire, in front of the fire held hands, admired each other, babbled, swung their four clasped hands in unison. Girlish. Hearts full of joy. The big night. Miranda was dressed in black, of course — her totem was still hanging in the bathroom — and around her throat she wore a black velvet band. Her bosom was an unleashed animal.
“My God, Candy, we’re just kids. Two kids. Two baby sitters waiting for dates! And they’ll be here any sec! ”
“And me, Miranda?” Squirming, shrugging, raising my chin toward the cracks in the ceiling, “What about me, Miranda?”
“You?” She laughed, showed her big white knees, pretended to waltz with Cassandra in front of the fire. “You’re the Mah Jongg champion. Boy, what a Mah Jongg champion you are!” And suddenly locking Cassandra’s face between her bare white hands, and swaying, smiling at Cassandra’s little downcast eyes: “My God, I wish Don were here,” she said. “I wish Don could see you tonight, Candy.”
“Watch out for the asthma,” I murmured, but too softly and too late because the dates were stamping on the veranda, banging on the door, and she was gone, was already rushing down the hall and kissing them, throwing herself on the sniffling figures standing there in the cold.
And under my breath, quickly: “First dance, Cassandra? Please?”
“I can’t promise, Skipper. I can’t make promises any more.”
Then the fire shot high again and the black beauty was herding them all into the parlor — Jomo, Bub, Grandma who looked like a little corncob tied up with rags — and they were all blowing on their fingers, kicking the snow off their boots, sniffling. Red ears. Mean eyes. Smears of Miranda’s lipstick on each of the faces.
“Have a drink, Jomo?” she said, and hugged his narrow black iron shoulders with her long white arm, ran her other hand through Bub’s wet hair. “Just one for the road?”
“Can’t. Red’s out in the car. Waiting.”
The long-billed baseball cap, the steady eyes, the flat black sideburns sculpted frontier-style with a straight razor, pug nose and skin the color of axle grease and little black snap-on bow tie and lips drawn as if he were going to whistle through his teeth — this was Jomo and Jomo was looking at Cassandra, staring at her, with one oblivious snuff of his pug nose expressed all the contempt and desire of his ruthless race. It was the green taffeta bow, of course, and before he could finish his contemplation of that green party favor, green riddle as big as a balloon, I stepped in front of him, and hoping, as I always hoped, that one day he would forget and give me his cold hook of steel, I thrust out my hand.
“Evening, Jomo,” I said. “How’s the cod? Running?”
He waited. No artificial hand. No real hand. Only the soft light of fury sliding off his face, only one more baffling question to ask his old man about and to hold against me. So he turned to Miranda, jerked his head toward the door.
“Anyways, Red’s got a pint in his pocket. Let’s go.”
But the little old woman, mother of the Captain and grandmother of his noxious sons, was pushing on Bub’s sleeve and pointing in my direction and trying to talk.
“She wants to say something,” Bub said. “Tell Bub,” he said, and stuck his ear down to the little happy bobbing clot of the old woman’s face. Crushed once with a clam digger. Dug out of a hole at low tide. Little old woman with love and a sense of humor.
“All right,” I said, “what is it? And how is Mrs. Poor tonight?” I smiled and glanced at Cassandra — shining and silent cameo by the hearth — and smiled again, squared my shoulders, leaned my head slightly to one side for Mrs. Poor who was clinging to Bub’s arm and pumping with excitement in all the little black muscular valves of her mouth and eyes. Every Saturday Red went down to feed her doughnuts, and on Sundays after grace he would sometimes tell us about her health and happiness. “Well,” I said, knowing that she was shrewd, not to be trusted, that the little rag-bound head was stuffed with Jomo’s jokes and snatches of the prayer book which she knew by heart, “well, tell us what Grandma wants to say tonight.”
Bub looked at me, wiped his nose. “She says all the girls are sweet on you. You’re apple pie for the girls, she says. All the girls go after a rosy man like you. Real apple pie, she says.” And Bub was scowling and the old woman was nodding up and down, grinning, pointing, and Miranda was kneeling and fixing Cassandra’s bow.
“What a nice thing to say,” said Cassandra. “Don’t you think so, Skipper?”
Jomo leaned over and smacked his thigh. “God damn,” he said, “that’s good.”
And going down the hall toward the open door where I could see the snow driving and sifting — Miranda first, then Cassandra and Jomo and Bub and last, as usual, myself — I noticed Bub’s quick ferret gesture, quick fingers nudging his brother’s arm, and clearly heard his young boy’s voice cupped under a sly hand, in the darkness saw his boy’s feet dance a few lewd steps to the fun of his question:
“What’s that thing she’s wearing on her ass?”
And Jomo, in a dead-pan voice and puppet jerk of the silhouetted head: “Never you mind, Bub. And watch your language. You got a mouth full of rot.”
“Maybe. But I’d like to kill it with a stick.”
Old joke. Snickering shadow of island boy. Jackknife shadow of older brother. But then the snow, the darkness, the packed and crunching veranda, the dying oak and the picket fence heaped high with snow, and beyond the fence, low and throbbing like a diesel truck, the waiting car. It was a hot rod. Cut down. Black. Thirteen coats of black paint and wax. Thick aluminum tubes coiling out of the engine. And in the front an aerial — perfect even to the whip of steel, I thought — and tied to the tip of the aerial a little fat fuzzy squirrel tail, little flag freshly killed and plump, soft, twisting and revolving slowly in the snow, dark fur long and wet and glistening under the crystals of falling snow. The lights from the house were shining on the windshield — narrow flat rectangle of blind glass already half-buried like the silver hub caps in the heavy snow — and I glanced back toward the house and waved and, blinking away the snow, licking it, thinking of another departure, “Au revoir, Grandma,” I called softly, “take good care of Pixie.” Then I stumbled to the car with wet cheeks and with a smile on my wet lips.
I took hold of the handle. Turned, pulled, shook the handle. “Come on, Bub,” I said, leaning down, rapping on the glass, shading my eyes and attempting to peer into the car, “open the door, you’re not funny.” I squinted, brushed at the snow with a cold hand. I saw the two heads of hair and the knife-billed baseball cap between them in the back, saw Bub laughing, poking at Captain Red who sat behind the wheel holding the pint bottle up to his lip. I saw the pint bottle making the rounds.
“All right,” I said, when the door came open at last, “now get out for a moment, Bub. You can sit on my lap.”
“Now wait a minute. Just you wait. I got this seat first. Didn’t I? If there’s any lap-sitting to be done, it’s you who’s going to do it. Now you want to ride to the dance with us you better just climb into the car and have a seat. Right here.” Pointing. Laughter. Bottle sailing out the window. Captain Red — tall man dressed in his Sunday duds, shaved, fit to kill — blowing the horn three times. Three shrill trumpet blasts through the falling snow.