“All together like that,” he said. “It gives you the funniest feeling — when you all marching together, so that you can’t see away on either side, just men all together — it gives you a funny sort of feeling.”
He turned to Lena and grinned; his bright square teeth flashed in the evening dusk. “I reckon you think that silly.”
“No,” she said quickly, and then corrected herself: “Of course I never been in the army.”
“Look there,” I said. We were passing the white beach. Even as far away as the road where we were, we could smell the popcorn and the sweat and the faint salt tingle from the wind off the lake.
“It almost cool tonight,” Lena said.
“You ain’t gonna be cold?”
“You don’t got to worry about me.”
“I reckon I do,” he said.
Lena shook her head, and her eyes had a soft holding look in them. And I wished I could take Chris aside and tell him that he’d said just the right thing.
Out on the concrete walks of the white beach, people were jammed so close that there was hardly any space between. You could hear all the voices and the talking, murmuring at this distance. Then we were past the beach (the driver was going fast, grumbling under his breath that he was behind schedule), and the Ferris wheel was the only thing you could see, a circle of lights like a big star behind us. And on each side, open ground, low weeds, and no trees.
“There it is,” Chris said, and pointed up through the window. I turned and looked and, sure enough, there it was; he was right: the lights, smaller maybe and dimmer, of Lincoln Beach, the colored beach.
“Lord,” Lena said, “I haven’t been out here in I don’t know when. It’s been that long.”
We got off the bus; he dropped my arm but kept hold of Lena’s. “You got to make this one night last all winter.”
She didn’t answer.
We had a fine time. I forgot that I was just tagging along and enjoyed myself much as any.
When we passed over by the shooting gallery Chris winked at Lena and me. “Which one of them dolls do you want?”
Lena wrinkled her nose. “I reckon you plain better see about getting ’em first.”
He just shrugged. “You think I can do it, Celia?”
“Sure,” I said. “Sure, sure you can.”
“That’s the girl for you,” the man behind the counter said. “Thinks you can do anything.”
“That my girl there all right.” Chris reached in his pocket to pay the man. I could feel my ears getting red.
He picked up the rifle and slowly knocked down the whole row of green and brown painted ducks. He kept right on until Lena and I each had a doll in a bright pink feather skirt and he had a purple wreath of flowers hung around his neck. By this time the man was scowling at him and a few people were standing around watching.
“That’s enough, soldier,” the man said. “This here is just for amateurs.”
Chris shrugged. We all turned and walked away.
“You did that mighty well,” Lena said, turning her baby doll around and around in her hands, staring at it.
“I see lots of fellows better.”
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” I tugged on his sleeve.
“I didn’t learn—”
“Fibber!” Lena tossed her head.
“You got to let me finish. Up in Calcasieu parish, my daddy, he put a shotgun in my hand and give me a pocket of shells... I just keep shooting till I hit something or other.”
It was hard to think of Chris having a father. “Where’s he now?”
“My daddy? He been dead.”
“You got a family?”
“No,” Chris said. “Just me.”
We walked out along the strip of sand, and the wind began pulling the feathers out of the dolls’ skirts. I got out my handkerchief and tied it around my doll, but Lena just lifted hers up high in the air to see what the wind would do. Soon she just had a naked baby doll that was pink celluloid smeared with glue.
Lena and Chris found an old log and sat down. I went wading. I didn’t want to go back to where they were, because I knew that Chris wanted Lena alone. So I kept walking up and down in the water that came just a little over my ankles.
It was almost too cold for swimmers. I saw just one, about thirty yards out, swimming up and down slowly. I couldn’t really see him, just the regular white splashes from his arms. I looked out across the lake, the way I liked to do. It was all dark now; there was no telling where the lower part of the sky stopped and the water began. It was all the one color, all of it, out beyond the swimmer and the breakwater on the left where the waves hit a shallow spot and turned white and foamy. Except for that, it was all the same dark until you lifted your eyes high up in the sky and saw the stars.
I don’t know how long I stood there, with my head bent back far as it would go, looking at the stars, trying to remember the names for them that I had learned in schooclass="underline" names like Bear and Archer. I couldn’t tell which was which. All I could see were stars, bright like they always were at the end of the summer and close; and every now and then one of them would fall.
I stood watching them, feeling the water move gently around my legs and curling my toes in the soft lake sand that was rippled by the waves. And trying to think up ways to stay away from those two who were sitting back up the beach, on a piece of driftwood, talking together.
Once the wind shifted a little suddenly or Chris spoke too loud, because I heard one word: “Oregon.”
All of a sudden I knew that Lena was going to marry him. Just for that she was going to marry him; because she wanted so much to be white.
And I wanted to tell Chris again, the way I had wanted to in the bus, that he’d said just the right thing.
After a while Lena stood up and called to me, saying it was late; so we went home. By the time we got there, Ma had come. On the table was a bag of food she had brought. And so we all sat around and ate the remains of the party: little cakes, thin and crispy and spicy and in fancy shapes; and little patties full of oysters that Ma ran in the oven to heat up; and little crackers spread with fishy-tasting stuff, like sugar grains only bigger, that Ma called caviar; and all sorts of little sandwiches.
It was one nice thing about the place Ma worked. They never did check the food. And it was fun for us, tasting the strange things.
All of a sudden Lena turned to me and said: “I reckon I want to see where Oregon is.” She gave Chris a long look out of the corner of her eyes.
My mouth was full and for a moment I couldn’t answer.
“You plain got to have a map in your schoolbooks.”
I finally managed to swallow. “Sure I got one — if you want to see it.”
I got my history book and unfolded the map of the whole country and put my finger down on the spot that said Oregon in pink letters. “There,” I said. “That’s Portland there.”
Lena came and leaned over my shoulder; Pete didn’t move; he sat with his chin in his hand and his elbows propped on the table.
“I want to stay here and be the same as white,” he said, but we weren’t listening to him.
Chris got out of the icebox the bottles of beer he had brought.
“Don’t you want to see?” Lena asked him.
He grinned and took out his key chain, which had an opener on it, and began popping the caps off the bottles. “I looked at a map once. I know where it’s at.”