She straightened up, draping an arm across the seat. She scooted back down his legs, stroked his stomach lightly and fingered his equipment.
“Sorry,” he said, assuming still more was expected.
“Why?” Suzie asked. “It’s cute when it’s floppy.”
She scooted farther back down his legs, until her back was against the far door. Then she squatted on her haunches.
“Put your toe in me,” she said.
“No,” Duane said, horrified. He had just spotted another set of approaching headlights.
“I’m real wet,” Suzie said. “Put your toe in.”
“Another truck’s coming,” he said.
“I know,” Suzie said. “I like that sound they make when they come roaring through town.”
Duane decided she was interesting but crazy. He kept his feet to himself.
“I got my socks on,” he said. “It won’t work.”
Suzie immediately reached down and peeled the sock off one foot.
“Now what’s your excuse?” she said.
“Why would you want me to do that with my old smelly foot?” Duane asked, as the truck roared nearer.
“To see if it feels interesting,” Suzie said. “Stop asking dumb questions.”
“I don’t think I can. My foot’s gone to sleep,” Duane said, grasping at straws.
“Dickie does it,” Suzie said. “Dickie’s not afraid. He’s the only one in this town with any imagination.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Duane said, “but I’d rather be hearing it on the back side of the post office. What if that trucker saw me with my toe in you and lost his mind? He might run right through the hardware store, and then what would we do for lawn-mower parts?”
Suzie was still squatting on her haunches, more or less over his feet, when the truck arrived. This time the truck driver braked carefully at the light. The big motor throbbed beside them for several seconds, then the truck went on. The second driver showed no more interest in the car or its occupants than the first one had.
“If I let you drive around behind the post office will you try it?” Suzie asked.
“I don’t know,” Duane said. “It’s a possibility. I don’t want to commit myself.”
“What do you think I’ll do, make your stupid toe rot off?” Suzie asked. She seemed to be becoming irritated.
“No, of course not,” Duane said.
“You put your finger in me,” Suzie said. “You put your dick in me. Why not your toe?”
“Let’s see what life’s like around behind the post office,” Duane said. He got his feet free and slipped under the wheel. He waited for Suzie to sit down, but she didn’t sit down. She continued to squat.
“It’s not very far to the post office,” she pointed out.
Duane started the car.
CHAPTER 60
IN THE COMFORTABLE DARKNESS BEHIND THE POST office Duane gingerly indulged in a number of games. Suzie made it clear that she regarded him as a coward, but she didn’t let his cowardice prevent her from pursuing her interests.
When she was content, he asked her if G. G. Rawley had ever participated in any of her games.
“You bet,” she said. “He was the first man I was ever unfaithful to Junior with. It happened in the Sunday-school room. He got me up there pretending he wanted me to help him tune that old piano they use in Sunday school.”
“Is that why you’re mad at him?” Duane asked.
“I’m mad at him because he wouldn’t do it anywhere except in the Sunday-school room,” Suzie said. “He could have come to my house, or we could have gone to a motel. I got tired of trying to get comfortable on a piano bench.”
“There’s the floor,” Duane observed. Now that he was in the dark, he enjoyed talking to Suzie about sex.
“G.G.’s got arthritis,” Suzie said. “It’s all he can do to stoop over.
“It was good, though,” she added. “I yelled so loud I scared him to death a couple of times. Doing it with a preacher’s real exciting, I guess because they’re not supposed to be doing it with you. It sure beats doing it with your husband.”
“Couldn’t get old Junior to play too many games, huh?” Duane said.
Suzie looked out the window. Her face changed—it looked for a moment as if she might cry.
“No,” she said. “Junior gets scared if you even mention a game.”
Duane saw that he had touched a raw nerve. He felt sorry he had asked.
“That was the sadness of our marriage,” Suzie said. “I could have made him very happy if he’d let me. But he just never would let me.”
She sighed and came back into his arms.
“We got nice kids,” she said. “They win everything, everything. I think we would have had a real nice marriage if Junior hadn’t been so scared. It seems such a waste. I don’t think he wanted to be happy. Why would anybody not want to be happy, Duane?”
“I don’t know,” Duane said. He thought of Sonny, who had never been happy. Though he himself had often been sad, he had also been keenly happy. Sonny hadn’t. He had concentrated on holding some middle space between victory and defeat. Now, despite a life of good planning, defeat was staring him in the face anyway.
“Junior’s mother was never happy,” Suzie said. “She had a real hard life. I guess it made Junior feel guilty to think of being happy when his mother never got to be.
“I’ll tell you who’s happy, and that’s Dickie,” she said. “You ought to be proud of yourself for raising such a nice kid. It just lifts my spirits the minute I see him coming. That’s a great gift, to be able to lift people’s spirits just by showing up.”
Duane knew she had paid his son a fine compliment. But he was remembering Junior, her husband, nervously asking the question about whether women wanted sex more than men, at the Dairy Queen a few weeks earlier. It seemed sad. Junior had struggled hard and become wealthy. He had done all that he had been taught to do: work hard, save, get ahead. Then the economy had turned out from under him and he had lost his wealth. And all the while, for rich or for poor, he was being overmatched at home by a nice woman who just happened to have a much richer sexuality than he had.
“What are you thinking about?” Suzie asked.
“I just can’t help feeling sorry for Junior,” he said.
“Oh, well,” Suzie said, “Junior enjoys feeling sorry for himself. Maybe all you men enjoy feeling sorry for yourselves. I’m hanging on to Dickie while I can. He don’t feel sorry for himself. Dickie likes to live.
“I gotta go,” she said. “The kids will be getting home from their swim meet any time.”
Duane got into his pickup and followed her around the courthouse. They both caught the red light beneath which they had had such an interesting ten minutes. Duane felt a little sad. He—they—would never do that again, not in that place, that way. A short but exciting part of life was behind him.
Suzie had recovered her spirits. She wasn’t sad at all. She grinned and blew him a kiss.
“I sure hope your toe don’t rot off, Duane,” she said, as the light changed.
CHAPTER 61
IT WAS STILL EARLY, SO DUANE DROVE TO THE BALL park. He saw Julie hanging around the Sno-Cone stand with two of her girlfriends. Jack was on the mound. Duane parked and walked over to the small section of bleachers. There were lots of spectators, but few of them bothered with the bleachers. They pulled their cars and pickups up to the ball-park fence and sat in their cars, drinking beer and chatting.
Jacy sat in one of the lower rows of the bleachers, Shorty dozing beside her. That Shorty was asleep in the bleachers was in itself a remarkable thing. He was never allowed out of the pickup at ball games because he ran around biting people. Sometimes he bit children; at other times, excited by the play, he ran onto the field and bit the players.
Jacy not only had Shorty, she also had Little Mike, who was walking barefoot in the dust behind the home-plate screen, talking happily to himself. When he noticed his grand
father he smiled and ran over. Duane hoisted him into the bleachers.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Jacy said. “Your son’s got a no-hitter going.”
Jack was indeed an exceptional young pitcher. On the mound he assumed a deadly, cold, relentless manner and blazed fast ball after fast ball over the heart of the plate. He had no confidence in his fielders and preferred to strike out as many batters as possible.
“How many has he struck out so far?” Duane asked.
“Just about all of them,” Jacy said. “A couple popped up, and one or two got on on errors.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be the one who made the errors,” Duane said. “Jack never forgets.”
Shorty opened his eyes and looked at Duane guiltily. Duane ignored him.
“Don’t be so unyielding,” Jacy said. “Pet your old dog.”
Duane hammered Shorty between the eyes a few times with his fist. Shorty stopped looking guilty and looked pleased.
“I said pet him, not brain him,” Jacy said.
“I’m not hurting him,” Duane assured her. “Shorty don’t operate off a brain.”
Jacy seemed relaxed. She scooted closer to him, looked at him curiously, wrinkled her nose, sniffed.
“What have you been doing, Duane?” she asked. “You smell funny.”
Duane immediately became rattled. He had not expected to find Jacy at the ball park. He told himself he should have gone on home, even if Jack was pitching. He could not tell that he smelled any particular way, but under Jacy’s eye he felt very aware of what he had been doing just before he came to the ball park.
“I came from a meeting,” he said. “I think they must have fumigated the courthouse today—getting it spiffed up for the crowds.”
Jacy lifted an eyebrow. “Give me some credit,” she said.
A fat kid swung at a fast ball and rapped a weak grounder to the left-field side of the pitcher’s mound. Jack pounced on it and threw a dead strike to the first baseman. The ball popped out of the first baseman’s glove and sailed like a low pop fly over toward the second baseman. He fumbled it, dropped it, and, in attempting to pick it up, kicked it toward home plate. The fat boy was lumbering down the base path. Jack dashed over, grabbed the trickling ball barehanded, and raced the fat boy toward first. The first baseman was begging for another throw but Jack ignored him. It became clear that the fat boy had too big a lead. He was going to be safe by half a step. At the last second, instead of throwing the ball, Jack threw himself. He hit the fat boy with something between a tackle and a clip, knocking him off the base path. Jack popped up first, the ball still in his hand, and crossed the bag. Horns were honking, people were yelling, the opposing manager came racing across the infield in protest.
“That a-way, Jack!” Jacy yelled, forgetting the issue of Duane’s smell. She jumped up and clapped. Shorty jumped up and yipped. Thanks to the pickup horns, all of which were blaring, the small crowd made as much racket as a large crowd.
The umpire not only ruled the base runner safe, he awarded him an extra base. Jack’s manager protested. The crowd yelled. Several indignant mothers who had seen Jack resort to similar tactics many times rushed onto the playing field to demand his ouster from the game. The umpire was unwilling to go that far, but the mothers insisted.
“Boo, kill the ump,” Jacy said.
“Shut up,” Duane said. “Jack might hear you.”
“I want him to hear me!” Jacy said. “Didn’t you love the way he tackled that kid?”
“This is baseball, not football,” Duane pointed out.
“I never would have expected you to become such a wimp, Duane,” Jacy said.
Jack, who still had the ball, walked back to the pitcher’s mound calmly, as if accepting the call. Duane knew better. Jack always seemed calm just before he did something unforgivable. He was watching the umpire, waiting for him to turn his back.
“Don’t do it, Jack!” Duane yelled, standing up. “You’ll spoil your no-hitter.”
The umpire turned his back, trying to herd the mothers off the field, and the second he did Jack hit him right between the shoulder blades with the ball.
“That does it, you’re out of the game,” the umpire yelled.
Jack walked up to home plate and threw his glove as high as he could. It came down on the backstop and stuck there. Then he walked off the field, climbed up in the bleachers and sat down by Jacy, who gave him a big hug and a kiss.
“You were just great,” she said.
“That wasn’t very smart, throwing your glove up on the screen,” Duane said.
“I won’t need it,” Jack said. “I’m never pitching again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Duane said.
Jacy looked at him hostilely.
“I hope you’re not one of those fathers who insist that their kids play athletics whether they want to or not,” she said.
“No, that’s up to him,” Duane said.
“Well, he just said he wasn’t ever pitching again,” Jacy pointed out.
“I would pitch again if they hadn’t spoiled my no-hitter,” Jack said.
“It wasn’t spoiled,” Duane said.
“Sure it was, there was a runner on second,” Jack said.
“But he didn’t get a hit,” Duane said. “He got on by an error. That doesn’t count against your no-hitter.”
“It’s not a real no-hitter if somebody gets on base,” Jack said. “That first baseman should have his throat cut.”
“Hey,” Duane said. “This is Little League baseball. An error doesn’t mean you should have your throat cut.”
“Not for that,” Jack said. “He’s squirrely. He jacks off for any girl that asks him to.”
“And you don’t?” Duane asked.
“Yuk, of course not,” Jack said. “I just jack off for the top girls.”
“Who would a top girl be?” Jacy asked.
“The prettiest,” Jack said, as if that should be obvious.
“Would I be a top girl if I were still a girl?” Jacy asked.
“Sure,” Jack said.
“That umpire should have his throat cut fifty different ways,” he added.
“You need to learn to control your temper,” Duane said. “What if your team loses because you got thrown out?”
“Be serious,” Jack said. “We’re ahead twenty-six to nothing.”
He got up and strolled off.
“He’s probably gone to look for some top girls,” Jacy said.
Little Mike was attempting to climb out of the bleachers. Since the steps were each roughly his height, he was finding it slow going, but he was going, nonetheless.
“Where’s Karla?” Duane asked.
“I think she went home to beat up her mother,” Jacy said. “Are you getting lonesome without her?”
“Yeah, come to think of it,” Duane said.
“Are you mad at me for kidnapping your family?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” Duane said. “They all do exactly what they want to, anyway. If they all want to live with you, that’s fine. There’s no way I could stop them, anyway.”
“But you do miss them a little, don’t you?” she asked.
“A little,” he admitted.
“I guess you’ll just have to suffer,” she said. “I’m taking Karla and the twins to Europe with me right after the centennial.”
That was a shock—so much of a shock that he could only stare blankly at her.
“For good?” he asked. It didn’t seem unlikely, considering the last few weeks.
“Of course not for good,” Jacy said. “Just for a couple of weeks. It’ll be good for them to see a little bit of Europe. Besides, I need them to help me ease back into a life there.”
“You’re a glutton for punishment,” he said. “Traveling with the twins is the worst ordeal I’ve ever lived through.”
“For you, maybe,” Jacy said. “I’m not uptight, like you are.”
“I’m not uptight,” he protes
ted.
“The hell you aren’t,” Jacy said. “You’re like a wire.”
Little Mike had reached the bottom. He clapped for himself briefly and then started climbing the screen behind home plate. He could get his toes through the wire.
“I might take Dickie to Europe,” Jacy said. “I want him to meet my daughters.”
“Take him,” Duane said. “If he stays around here his wife will probably shoot him. Or if not his wife, then somebody else’s husband.”
“Maybe he’ll fall in love with one of my daughters,” Jacy said. “Maybe they’ll marry. You and I might have grandchildren in common.”
Duane stepped out of the bleachers and pried Little Mike off the screen before he got too high to reach. Little Mike looked aggrieved but kept quiet.
“I don’t think you understand Dickie,” Jacy said. “Dickie has absolute charm. If I were in the mood for love I wouldn’t let my daughters near him. I’d keep him for myself.
“He’s one in a million, that boy,” she added.
“That’s what the cops think, too,” Duane said. “They’re glad he’s one in a million.”
“You’re not very partisan about your own kids, are you?” Jacy said. “You’re kind of stingy with your praise. You didn’t even cheer for Jack when he tackled that kid.”
“He wasn’t supposed to tackle him,” Duane said. “He can do all the tackling he wants to when football season starts.”
“That’s not the point,” Jacy said. “Your kids are great. You should root for them no matter what.”
“Why aren’t you in the mood for love?” he asked.
Jacy looked amused.
“What does it matter to you?” she asked. “If I were, it’d be Dickie I wanted, not his old man. Dickie’s got more bounce than any five men I know. Plus he has very sweet eyes.”
“He may be totally perfect, for all I know,” Duane said. “I just wondered why you aren’t in the mood for love?”
Jacy looked thoughtful. On the field, Jack’s team was struggling to end the inning. The fat boy had advanced to third on another infield error.