‘Watch me hold it up over my head!’ George hollered. ‘Watch how the water runs down.’
She was too full of energy to sit still. George had filled a meal sack with dirt and hung it to a limb of the tree for a punching bag. She began to hit this. Puck! Pock! She hit it in time to the song that had been in her mind when she woke up. George had mixed a sharp rock in the dirt and it bruised her knuckles.
‘Aoow! You skeeted the water right in my ear. It’s busted my eardrum. I can’t even hear.’
‘Gimme here. Let me skeet some.’
Sprays of the water blew into her face, and once the kids turned the hose on her legs. She was afraid her box would get wet, so she carried it with her through the alley to the front porch. Harry was sitting on his steps reading the newspaper.
She opened her box and got out the notebook. But it was hard to settle her mind on the song she wanted to write down.
Harry was looking over in her direction and she could not think.
She and Harry had talked about so many things lately. Nearly every day they walked home from school together. They talked about God. Sometimes she would wake up in the night and shiver over what they had said. Harry was a Pantheist.
That was a religion, the same as Baptist or Catholic or Jew.
Harry believed that after you were dead and buried you changed to plants and fire and dirt and clouds and water. It took thousands of years and then finally you were a part of all the world. He said he thought that was better than being one single angel. Anyhow it was better than nothing.
Harry threw the newspaper into his hall and then came over.
‘It’s hot like summer,’ he said. ‘And only March.’
‘Yeah. I wish we could go swimming.’
‘We would if there was any place.’
There’s not any place. Except that country club pool.’
‘I sure would like to do something--to get out and go somewhere.’
‘Me too,’ she said, ‘Wait! I know one place. It’s out in the country about fifteen miles. It’s a deep, wide creek in the woods. The Girl Scouts have a camp there in the summertime. Mrs. Wells took me and George and Pete and Sucker swimming there one time last year.’
If you want to I can get bicycles and we can go tomorrow. I have a holiday one Sunday a month.’
‘Well ride out and take a picnic dinner,’ Mick said.
‘O.K. I’ll borrow the bikes.’
It was time for him to go to work. She watched him walk down the street. He swung his arms. Halfway down the block there was a bay tree with low branches. Harry took a running jump, caught a limb, and chinned himself. A happy feeling came in her because it was true they were real good friends.
Also he was handsome. Tomorrow she would borrow Hazel’s blue necklace and wear the silk dress. And for dinner they would take jelly sandwiches and Nehi. Maybe Harry would bring something queer, because they ate orthodox Jew. She watched him until he turned the corner. It was true that he had grown to be a very good-looking fellow.
Harry in the country was different from Harry sitting on the back steps reading the newspapers and thinking about Hitler.
They left early in the morning. The wheels he borrowed were the kind for boys--with a bar between the legs. They strapped the lunches and bathing-suits to the fenders and were gone before nine o’clock. The morning was hot and sunny. Within an hour they were far out of town on a red clay road. The fields were bright and green and the sharp smell of pine trees was in the air. Harry talked in a very excited way. The warm wind blew into their faces. Her mouth was very dry and she was hungry. ‘See that house up on the hill there? Less us stop and get some water.’
‘No, we better wait. Well water gives you typhoid.’
‘I already had typhoid. I had pneumonia and a broken leg and a infected foot.’
‘I remember.’
‘Yeah,’ Mick said. ‘Me and Bill stayed in the front room when we had typhoid fever and Pete Wells would run past on the sidewalk holding his nose and looking up at the window. Bill was very embarrassed. All my hair came out so I was bald-headed.’
‘I bet we’re at least ten miles from town. We’ve been riding an hour and a half--fast riding, too.’
‘I sure am thirsty,’ Mick said. ‘And hungry. What you got in that sack for lunch?’
‘Cold liver pudding and chicken salad sandwiches and pie.’
That’s a good picnic dinner. ‘She was ashamed of what she had brought.’ I got two hard-boiled eggs--already stuffed--with separate little packages of salt and pepper. And sandwiches--blackberry jelly with butter. Everything wrapped in oil paper.
And paper napkins.’
‘I didn’t intend for you to bring anything,’ Harry said. ‘My Mother fixed lunch for both of us. I asked you out here and all. We’ll come to a store soon and get cold drinks.’
They rode half an hour longer before they finally came to the filling-station store. Harry propped up the bicycles and she went in ahead of him. After the bright glare the store seemed dark. The shelves were stacked with slabs of white meat, cans of oil, and sacks of meal. Flies buzzed over a big, sticky jar of loose candy on the counter.
‘What kind of drinks you got?’ Harry asked. The storeman started to name them over. Mick opened the ice box and looked inside. Her hands felt good in the cold water. ‘I want a chocolate Nehi. You got any of them? ‘ ‘Ditto,’ Harry said. ‘Make it two.’
‘No, wait a minute. Here’s some ice-cold beer. I want a bottle of beer if you can treat as high as that’ Harry ordered one for himself, also. He thought it was a sin for anybody under twenty to drink beer--but maybe he just suddenly wanted to be a sport. After the first swallow he made a bitter face. They sat on the steps in front of the store.
Mick’s legs were so tired that the muscles in them jumped.
She wiped the neck of the bottle with her hand and took a long, cold pull. Across the road there was a big empty field of grass, and beyond that a fringe of pine woods. The trees were every color of green--from a bright yellow-green to a dark color that was almost black. The sky was hot blue.
‘I like beer,’ she said. ‘I used to sop bread down in the drops our Dad left. I like to lick salt out my hand while I drink. This is the second bottle to myself I’ve ever had.’
The first swallow was sour. But the rest tastes good.’
The storeman said it was twelve miles from town. They had four more miles to go. Harry paid him and they were out in the hot sun again. Harry was talking loud and he kept laughing without any reason.
‘Gosh, the beer along with this hot sun makes me dizzy. But I sure do feel good,’ he said.
‘I can’t wait to get in swimming.’
There was sand in the road and they had to throw all their weight on the pedals to keep from bogging. Harry’s shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. He still kept talking. The road changed to red clay and the sand was behind them. There was a slow colored song in her mind--one Portia’s brother used to play on his harp. She pedaled in time to it.
Then finally they reached the place she had been looking for.
‘This is it! See that sign that says PRIVATE? We got to climb the bob-wire fence and then take that path there--see!’ The woods were very quiet. Slick pine needles covered the ground. Within a few minutes they had reached the creek. The water was brown and swift. Cool. There was no sound except from the water and a breeze singing high up in the pine trees.
It was like the deep, quiet woods made them timid, and they walked softly along the bank beside the creek.
‘Don’t it look pretty.’
Harry laughed. ‘What makes you whisper? Listen here!’ He clapped his hand over his mouth and gave a long Indian whoop that echoed back at them. ‘Come on. Let’s jump in the water and cool off.’
‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘O.K. Then we’ll eat first. We’ll eat half the lunch now and half later on when we come out’ She unwrapped the jelly sandwiches. When they were finished Harry balled the papers neatly and stuffed them into a hollow tree stump. Then he took his shorts and went down the path.