“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Drew said. “I could drive you around the block or so and let you out back here.”
“He can’t get a feel for it just around the block,” Callie said. “Come on, Stanley.”
“I don’t know how long we’re going to be out there,” Drew said. “It could be a while.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“It’s pretty hot,” he said.
“Oh, not with this nice wind blowing,” Callie said. “And the lake will be even nicer.”
“I suppose,” Drew said, but he didn’t look very happy. He leaned over the seat and looked at me as if pleading. “You’re sure you want to go?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, all right,” he said, and drove us away.
———
NEAR THE LAKE the trees were thinner because the bulldozers that had made the lake had knocked them down. Where they had done their scraping, red clay sloped into the water. There was no sand on the shore, just clay. I mentioned this.
“They have to haul it in,” Drew said, as we got out of the car.
“It would have been a lot nicer,” Callie said, “if they had left more trees. Maybe the shore wouldn’t be falling off into the water if they had.”
“My father owns the company that made the lake,” Drew said.
“He could have still left more trees,” Callie said, never one to waffle on an opinion if she sincerely held it.
Drew didn’t really care, however. He was holding Callie’s hand as they walked. He moved like his feet weren’t touching the ground.
It was awfully mushy to me at the time, and I hated seeing it, Callie holding hands and cooing, Drew falling all over himself. It was hard to believe he had the grace to run with a football.
The cool wind blew for a time, and we walked, and talked. None of it was about murder and whores and girls liking girls or headless bodies on railroad tracks.
We went along the edge of the lake for some distance, but it was too muddy to get up close, and though we had had plenty of rain, it had been compensated for by the heat, which had sucked away a lot of the water. You could see a couple of little islands out in the center of the lake, maybe thirty or forty feet apart, and the vegetation on them had died flat-out and turned the islands to mounds of dirt. There was a smell in the air of dead fish, and the kind of smell that makes the skin crawl, the kind associated with water moccasins who have lain in slick, smelly river mud gone sour and stale.
After an hour or so, we started back. Partly because the wind had stopped blowing and it was now hot as a baker’s oven. We stopped at a log near the car and sat and scraped our shoes free of mud with sticks.
“Daddy says they’re going to put in some tables and benches, cooking areas, boat ramps. Maybe plant some trees.”
“Like the ones that were here?” Callie said.
“Fast-growing trees. There’s going to be a colored section too. On the other side of the lake.”
“How convenient,” Callie said.
“I haven’t a thing against coloreds,” Drew said. “Really.”
He sounded like he meant it.
“Why don’t we go back to town,” Drew said, “get a burger and soda?”
By this time, I was actually starting to get hungry. That’s the way kids are. Bottomless pits.
“Callie, you got any money?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of you,” Drew said.
“You can take care of me,” Callie said, “but I have Stanley’s money. He’s not your responsibility. You’re not dating both of us.”
“Well,” Drew said, “that’s true. But I don’t mind.”
“You’re sweet,” Callie said, in that syrupy voice she uses when she wants something from Daddy, “but it’s not a problem.”
We tooled back into town in the Cadillac, and I must admit I felt pretty special when we stopped in front of the drugstore and climbed out of that fine machine, stood on the hot sidewalk like three gods descended from heaven.
———
WE HAD HAMBURGERS and malts at the drugstore, and I might add Drew paid for all of it. Timothy was working again, and he looked less than happy to see Callie with Drew. He put our food on the table like he was delivering bubonic plague. He had his soda hat pulled down close to his eyes, and his mouth was held so tight the thin line it made could have been used to thread a needle.
“What’s with him?” Drew said.
“Don’t pay him any mind,” Callie said.
“He wants to date her,” I said.
“Stanley!” Callie said, as if this revelation shocked her.
“You want me to take care of him?” Drew said.
“What? Hit him because he wants to date me?”
“Tell him to leave you alone.”
“No, Drew. I want to eat, then maybe we can go to the movie. It starts at one. I’ve already checked.”
“You have a theater,” he said. “Don’t you get tired of movies?”
“No,” she said. “And that’s our theater. I think of it, I mostly think of work. Besides, I want to see the movie at the Palace.”
“It’s a love story,” I said.
“Well,” Drew said. “If you want to.”
I almost felt sorry for Drew, way Callie had him tied around her little finger. She could have asked him to take her to a ballet recital and have him watch while wearing a tutu and a beret, and he would have done it.
We went to the picture, and it bored me. I slept through most of it because the theater was air-conditioned. Back then, any place that was air-conditioned in the summer was a treat.
As we were going out, we saw James Stilwind at the candy and popcorn counter, leaning over it, talking to a young girl raking popcorn out of the popper into a bag.
“There’s James Stilwind,” Callie said.
“That’s him?” Drew said. I thought he sounded a little sour about the recognition. I had a feeling he had come up in their private conversations. For all I knew, Callie had blabbed about all the things I had told her.
’Course, I was kind of a blabbermouth myself.
Stilwind turned his head, saw Callie. He had a bright white smile that looked as if it belonged in a Pepsodent commercial. “Y’all enjoy the picture?”
“It was good,” Callie said.
“It was all right,” Drew said.
I remained silent.
James came over to us, leaving the girl behind the counter looking pouty, raking popcorn, shoving it into bags, stacking it at the back of the popper.
“Haven’t I seen you before?” James asked Callie.
“I believe so,” she said. “We were coming out of the drugstore, and I saw you with your wife.”
“Wife? No. You saw me with a date. I forget who it was, but she isn’t my wife.”
“You forget?” Callie said.
“Well, if it were you, I wouldn’t forget.”
“We have to go,” Drew said.
“Sure,” James said.
“And what’s your name?” he asked Callie.
She told him.
He asked ours. We told him. I don’t think he was listening.
