A Fine Dark Line

19

THREE DAYS BEFORE SCHOOL, a Saturday, Mom sent me and Callie to town to buy some school supplies. Callie, who had been learning to drive, took the car. Back then, though you had to have a license, the cops didn’t check them much. Fewer people, looser rules. You could drive around when you were thirteen, no problem.

Daddy wasn’t quite that loose with the rules, but he had started to let Callie drive at sixteen. With him in the car at first, and finally, now and then, alone.

We shopped, got the few things we needed. Mostly pens and pencils. They had a new kind of fountain pen you put little plastic cartridges full of ink into, and when those wore out, you replaced them. We bought a couple of those and lots of replacement cartridges. We bought Big Chief tablets, colored map pencils, two small dictionaries, and lots of writing paper and composition notebooks.

I loved all of that stuff. It was exciting. It was a great way to end a summer and prepare for a school year. I was actually starting to look forward to school.

Of course, within a month to six weeks I’d be sick of all of it and anxious for Thanksgiving, and then the Christmas holidays.

We finished around noon, put our booty in the car, then walked to the drugstore for a hamburger. Tim was working. He was still brooding over Callie’s last appearance there with Drew. We sat at the counter and he took our order, trying not to show any interest. But Callie’s green eyes and that glossy mane of a ponytail melted him.

“So,” he said, after writing down our order on a pad. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“I’m not sure,” Callie said.

“He like a permanent thing? I mean, are you going steady?”

“No,” she said.

“You dating other people?”

“Not just now.”

“I see. But you might.”

“Sure. I might.”

“What about Stilwind? You still interested in him? He’s too old for you, you know.”

“I’m not interested in him.”

Hope had returned to Tim’s breast. He said, “I’ll get this stuff going.”

He took the order back to the cook, shoved the slip through the service window.

We ate our hamburgers, Tim checking on us inordinately. Callie was very nice, smiled a lot. Tim looked as if he might break down and cry. He felt he had a chance now. We got extra Cokes with our meal.

When we finished, started outside, I said, “You like him too?”

“Not really. But I didn’t want him to spit in our food. And we got extra Cokes.”

“I think you just like messing with him.”

“You know I do.”

Callie walked over to the theater’s pay booth, examined the times posted there for the double feature. She came back and looked at her watch. “Movie starts in about fifteen minutes. Want to go? At least see the first feature?”

“Tim reminded you of James Stilwind. Well, I’m not interested in James Stilwind anymore.”

This wasn’t entirely true, but the nearness and excitement of starting school, the events of the other day, the whipping Daddy had given Chapman, had sucked some of the curiosity out of me.

“You were just nuts about finding out more about him the other day,” Callie said.

“I know,” I said. “Not now . . . You don’t want to see a movie that bad, Callie. I know you. You want to mess with Stilwind.”

“Just a little,” she said. “By the way. I got the time, but I forgot to see what’s showing.”

What was showing was Frankenstein—1970, starring one of my favorites, Boris Karloff. The main show was Touch of Evil, starring Charlton Heston and Orson Welles. Looking back, it was a strange mixture, but the Palace hadn’t quite gotten down the art of arranging double features. Frankenstein—1970 would have been better served at the drive-in.

We used the free passes James gave us, and once inside, Callie immediately tried to spot James, but he was nowhere to be seen.

I could tell she was disappointed, but the idea of seeing a new movie for free was exciting enough to make her forget about it. The air-conditioning was welcome. The day had already started to swelter.

We sat in our seats waiting for the lights to go down and the movie to come up. I said, “Did you really kill a blue jay?”

“I did,” Callie said. “I really didn’t think I would hit it. I wanted to try. I love baseball, and I wanted to see if I could throw. I don’t know why they don’t have girls’ baseball. Mom said during the war they had women’s baseball. She said she saw a game. Another thing, Drew said girls didn’t play baseball because it was hardball and girls could get hurt. That doesn’t make any sense. Boys get hurt.”

“Girls are weaker than boys,” I said.

“You’re weaker than me.”

She was right on this matter. I decided to be silent.

The lights went down. A newsreel was shown as part of the Saturday morning kid show. It was an old reel from the war, well dated. I have no idea why it was shown. All I remember about it was the announcer saying “. . . Japs come out of their holes on Iwo Jima . . .”

Next came cartoons. Road Runner and Coyote. We laughed our way through that one. Then came the kids’ show, Frankenstein—1970.

Then came Touch of Evil. Unlike today, the price of one ticket took care of it all. You could sit through the kids’ show, the main feature, usually a double feature (not this time since Touch of Evil was lengthy), and when it played again, you could sit through that, watch whatever was shown until the show closed up. That way you could see the kids’ feature, a double feature, and another cartoon twice. It was a great way to spend a day and thirty-five cents.

When the movie was over, I stopped by the rest room. When I came out, there was James talking to Callie. James was grinning so wide his teeth looked like a piano row.

“Jim says he’ll show me how the projector works,” Callie said.

“We have one at home,” I said. “I can show you.”

“This one’s a little different,” James said. “It’ll only take a minute. Why don’t you go over to the concession, get whatever you want, tell them I said so. You want anything, hon?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Hon? That was quick. He was already talking to her like she was a steady date.

“Just be a minute,” Callie said.

“All right,” I said.

I went over to the concession, realized I wasn’t really in the mood for anything. I was still full and there was plenty of this stuff back at the drive-in. I stood near the wall next to the door and looked outside.

It was bright out there, and after the darkness of the theater, it was like a white-hot slap. I blinked until I could see again.

A light drizzle had come while we were watching the movie. It was long gone, but the streets steamed with condensation. Cars rode over it as if they were floating on cotton or clouds.

Bored of watching, I finally went over to the concession for something to do. I asked the girl working there if I could have a Coke. I told her James had sent me and that he said it was okay.

She went about drawing the Coke quickly, as if it was the foulest thing she had ever done. When she set it on the counter for me to take, I realized she was the girl who had been behind the counter before.

“He with your sister?” she said, smacking gum.

“He’s showing her how the projector works.”

She snorted. “That’s not all he’s showing her.”

“What does that mean?”

She snorted again. “You’re too young.”