“What do you think you’re doing, boy?”
“Honey, I’ve been waiting three weeks to grab you like this.”
“Well now that you’ve grabbed me you can turn me loose.”
“Sweetheart, I’ll never turn you loose.” Mother of all living, what an armful.
“All right now, son—”
“What?”
“You can turn me loose.”
“No.”
“Listen, big buddy. I’m as strong as you are.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I may not be as big as you are—”
“You are here.”
“—but I’m just as strong.”
“Not really.”
“All right, you watch here.” She balls up her fist like a man’s and smacks me hard on the arm.
“That hurts.”
“Then quit messing with me.”
“All right. I won’t mess with you.”
“Hit me.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Hit me.” She holds her elbow tight against her body. “Come on, boy.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not going to hit you.”
“Come on hit me. I’m not kidding. You can’t hurt me.”
“All right.” I hit her.
“Na. I don’t mean just playlike. Really hit me.”
“You mean it?”
“I swear before God.”
I hit just hard enough to knock her over.
“Got dog.” She gets up quickly. “That didn’t hurt. I got a good mind to hit you right in the mouth, you jackass.”
“I believe you,” I say laughing. “Now you come here.”
“What for? All right now!” She cocks her fist again. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I just want to tell you what’s on my mind.”
“What?”
“You. You and your sweet lips. Sweetheart, before God I can’t think about anything in the world but putting my arms around you and kissing your sweet lips.”
“O me.”
“Do you care if I do?”
“I don’t care if you do.”
I hold springtime in my arms, the fullness of it and the rinsing sadness of it.
“I’ll tell you something else.”
“What?”
“Sweetheart, I can’t get you out of my mind. Not since you walked into my office in that yellow dress. I’m crazy about you and you know it, don’t you?”
“O me.”
I sit back to see her and take her hands. “I can’t sleep for thinking of you.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“We made us some money, didn’t we?”
“We sure did. Don’t you want some money? I’ll give you five thousand dollars.”
“No, I don’t want any money.”
“Let’s go down the beach a ways.”
“What for?”
“So they can’t see us.”
“What’s the matter with them seeing us?”
“It’s all right with me.”
“Ho now, you son.”
“You’re my sweetheart. Do you care if I love you?”
“Nayo indeed. But you’re not getting me off down there with those rattlesnakes.”
“Rattlesnakes!”
“No sir. We gon stay right here close to those folks and you gon behave yourself.”
“All right.” I clasp my hands in the hollow of her back. “I’ll tell you something else.”
“Uh oh.” She rears back, laughing, to see me, a little embarrassed by our closeness. “Well you got me.”
“I’m sorry you work for me.”
“Sorry! Listen, son. I do my work.”
“I wouldn’t want you to think I was taking advantage of you.”
“Nobody’s taking advantage of me,” she says huffily.
I laugh at her. “No, I mean our business relationship.” We sit up and drink our beer. “I have a confession to make to you. I’ve been planning this all week.”
“What?”
“This picnic.”
“Well I be dog.”
“Don’t kid me. You knew.”
“I swear I didn’t.”
“But it’s the business part of it that worries me—”
“Business and pleasure don’t have to mix.”
“Well, all I wanted you to know was that when I acted on impulse—”
“I always act on impulse. I believe in saying what you mean and meaning what you say.”
“I can see that.”
“You just ask Joyce what I said about you.”
“Joyce?”
“My roommate.”
“What did you say?”
“You just ask her.”
I look up and down the beach. “I don’t see her.”
“I don’t mean now, you jackass.”
We swim and lie down together. The remarkable discovery forces itself upon me that I do not love her so wildly as I loved her last night. But at least there is no malaise and we lie drowsing in the sun, hands clasped in the other’s back, until the boat whistle blows.
Yet loves revives as we spin homewards along the coast through the early evening. Joy and sadness come by turns, I know now. Beauty and bravery make you sad, Sharon’s beauty and my aunt’s bravery, and victory breaks your heart. But life goes on and on we go, spinning along the coast in a violet light, past Howard Johnson’s and the motels and the children’s carnival. We pull into a bay and have a drink under the stars. It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh.
“My mother has a fishing camp at Bayou des Allemands. Would you like to stop there?”
She nods into my neck. She has become tender toward me and now and then presses my cheek with her hand.
Just west of Pearl River a gravel road leaves the highway and winds south through the marshes. All at once we are in the lonely savannah and the traffic is behind us. Sharon still hides her face in my neck.
A lopsided yellow moon sheds a feeble light over the savannah. Faraway hummocks loom as darkly as a flotilla of ships. Awkwardly we walk over and into the marsh and along the boardwalk. Sharon cleaves to me as if, in staying close, she might not see me.
I cannot believe my eyes. It is difficult to understand. We round a hummock and there is the camp ablaze like the Titanic. The Smiths are home.
MY HALF BROTHERS and sisters are eating crabs at a sawbuck table on the screened porch. The carcasses mount toward a naked light bulb.
They blink at me and at each other. Suddenly they feel the need of a grown-up. A grown-up must certify that they are correct in thinking that they see me. They all, every last one, look frantically for their mother. Thérèse runs to the kitchen doorway.
“Mother! Jack is here!” She holds her breath and watches her mother’s face. She is rewarded. “Yes, Jack!”
“Jean-Paul ate some lungs.” Mathilde looks up from directly under my chin.
My half brother Jean-Paul, the son of my mother, is a big fat yellow baby piled up like a buddha in his baby chair, smeared with crab paste and brandishing a scarlet claw. The twins goggle at us but do not leave off eating.
Lonnie has gone into a fit of excitement in his wheelchair. His hand curls upon itself. I kiss him first and his smile starts his head turning away in a long trembling torticollis. He is fourteen and small for his age, smaller than Clare and Donice, the ten-year-old twins. But since last summer when Duval, the oldest son, was drowned, he has been the “big boy.” His dark red hair is nearly always combed wet and his face is handsome and pure when it is not contorted. He is my favorite, to tell the truth. Like me, he is a moviegoer. He will go see anything. But we are good friends because he knows I do not feel sorry for him. For one thing, he has the gift of believing that he can offer his sufferings in reparation for men’s indifference to the pierced heart of Jesus Christ. For another thing, I would not mind so much trading places with him. His life is a serene business.