what had happened at the cabin, Larry’s fight with Silas. Carl had returned home later that evening, no apology, no mention of the rifle, come in the house as if he’d been working. Gone to the refrigerator, gotten a beer, and sat in front of the television watching baseball. They’d had supper that night, no one speaking beyond Carl saying the blessing his mother insisted on, “Bless this food, amen,” but gradually, the next day, the one after, their life together had resumed, Carl working, his mother cooking and cleaning, out volunteering for the church, Larry going to school.
Riding now, he sat against the passenger door of the red Ford and looked out the window at the landscape of his life, a different landscape today, the trees and vines, the Walker house going by outside the window, its uneven porch, its tar-papered walls, the house in which his date moved, dressed, undressed, her pretty face reflected in the bathroom mirror.
Soon Larry and his father were passing the cluttered houses near Fulsom, then his father’s shop, then through downtown, to the school where he said, “Bye, Daddy,” and got out, Carl saying, “Have a good one,” with his usual glance, Larry with his stack of books going off to homeroom.
HE WAS A junior now, the high school still with more black students than white, but with a better ratio than the Chabot school, and so Larry, one of four white boys in his homeroom, against five black ones, felt safer. The girls were evenly divided.
Slipping into his desk this morning, he couldn’t help but say to Ken, who sat behind him, “I’m going to the drive-in this weekend.”
“By yourself?”
David, a row over, snickered. “Naw, Kenny, he’ll have a date.” He made a fist of his hand and mimed masturbating. “Same date he has ever night.”
“It’s Cindy Walker,” Larry said, and turned back to face the front of the room, their teacher coming in, telling the class to pipe down.
“Horse shit,” Ken hissed to the back of his head. “She wouldn’t go out with
“Is, too,” Larry whispered over his shoulder.
“Mr. Ott,” the teacher said, “is there something you want to share with the class?”
All eyes settled on him and Larry said, “No, ma’am.”
At break he walked past a classroom building and behind the gym, toward the baseball field. There were two sets of metal bleachers and one had been designated as a smoking area for students. Larry rarely came out here, usually spent his breaks alone in the gym, reading on a bench, but today was different. He knew Cindy smoked and hung out here with her friends in their acid-washed jeans and T-shirts. On the field the baseball team was practicing, and Larry saw Silas in the shortstop position, fielding hard-hit balls and flipping them effortlessly to the second baseman, Morton Morrisette. The double-play combo was locally famous, 32 Jones and M &M, two youngsters, the newspaper had said, you couldn’t get a ball between if you shot it out of a gun.
Larry watched awhile, then spotted Cindy smoking in a cluster of white girls. He stepped out of the bleacher’s shadow and waved to her. She said something to her friends and walked over to him.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” She sucked on her cigarette and dropped it between them. “What’s up?”
“Just thought I’d tell you,” he said, “that
“The what?”
“
Cindy was looking toward the baseball field. “What.”
“That we were going to see
“Who?”
“He was an outlaw, in the old west?”
“Oh.”
They stood a moment.
“Listen,” she said. “I gotta go.”
“Wait. What time you want me to pick you up?”
“Seven, I guess. The movie don’t start till dark.”
“Okay,” he said, but she was walking off.
Then she turned. “Larry?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you get some beer?”
“I guess so.”
He stood a moment watching her go, then looked back toward the field, where Silas had been staring at the two of them. Larry lifted his hand to wave, hoping the black boy had seen him talking to Cindy, but then M &M said something behind his glove and Silas turned back just in time to shorthop a grounder.
IT WAS THE slowest week of his life, clocks his enemy, their hands mocking him with their frozen minutes. Classes that took forever anyway somehow seemed longer now, and he’d lost all interest in reading. In the afternoons his mother picked him up and asked about his day. Fine, he would say. Did he talk to Cindy? No, ma’am. Why not?
“Momma, stop asking me,” he said on Wednesday.
“I just thought you’d talk about what yall were gonna do.”
“We did Monday. I told you. We going to the movie.”
“Is she excited?”
She didn’t seem to be. He’d wave to her in the cafeteria and she’d nod or raise her chin, acting embarrassed.
“I guess so.”
“I remember my first date,” she said.
“With Daddy?”
She glanced at him. “No. It was with another man.” She talked about going fishing with him, how he baited her hook and nearly fell in the water he was so nervous. As his mother kept talking, Larry wondered if he should take Cindy fishing on their second date.
Thursday at lunch he brought his orange tray with its fish sticks, green beans, and corn to the white boys’ table and sat a few feet down from the cluster that included Ken and David. Each table had a teacher at its end, to keep order, Mr. Robertson, the vocational agriculture teacher down at the far end with a fat boy named Fred whose father raised cattle. Larry sat where he could see Cindy across the heads of black boys and girls bent over their food, watched her eat, her hair pushed back by a band. Silas sat, as ever, with the baseball team and Coach Hytower.
“Ott,” Ken called.
Larry looked up and Ken motioned him over. Surprised and worried, he slid his tray down the table.
“You got a rubber yet?” David asked.
Larry shook his head.
“Best place to get em,” David said, “is Chapman’s Drugs. Old man Chapman’ll sell em to you. He’ll sell you a
“He will?” Larry asked.
“What’s he need a rubber for?” another boy, Philip, asked.
“Ott here’s got him a date Friday. Ain’t that right?”
Larry nodded.
“With who?”
“Jackie,” somebody said, and the table laughed.
Blushing, Larry was about to answer when Ken said, “Cindy Walker.”
The boys’ heads all turned toward him.
“She’s a slut,” one boy said.
“How you know?” asked Ken.
