pointed her flashlight away from his face toward the crab apple. “I might have broke that bottom branch. And I flattened some of your ma’s flowers, and there’s some kind of prickly plant.” He held his hand under the beam of the flashlight. “Feels like I run my hand into a hill of red ants. I wanted to brush ’em off, and they latched onto my face.” The back of his hand motioned upward; fine gold cactus needles spread from his cheeks to his mouth and glinted on the dark of his eyepatch.
“Oh, for the love of Pete, Lux, you got into the prickly pear,” Dessie said. She scanned his face. Then she stepped back inside through the back door. As Lux waited, afraid to scratch or move in any direction, she returned with a washrag, a bottle of witch hazel, and a pair of tweezers. Under her arm, she had a can of beer. “Where’s your Jeep at?” she asked. “Never you mind,” said Lux. He poured the soothing witch hazel onto his hands and splashed at his face. “You just help me out here, and then I’ll be going. I’ll come back in the morning to help clean up.”
Dessie shone the fading flashlight up at Lux’s face; his good eye blinked. He wished he could see, he wished the pounding in his head would ease, he prayed that the next sound he heard would not be Bertram busting out the back door. He took a deep breath and instead heard Dessie’s hushed tones. “Quiet, Lux,” she said. “Set that beer under your shirt and stoop your head down. Hold this light right here. And be still, we better get these spines out first thing.” Her hands smelled like the nurse’s office. Lux tried to keep his arm from shaking as she worked with the tweezers. Hopefully, Billie was keeping watch. Dessie pulled at thin spines on his cheekbone and along his jaw. Recalling a trick that eased his nerves before a game, he began counting backward. “Ninety-nine . . . ninety-eight . . . ninety- seven,” he said, taking a breath between each number.
“What are you going on about, Lux?” Dessie asked, and then, “Can you please hold still?” she said again, holding his trembling hand firmly, for a couple of spines on his knuckles, easing them out. “Ninety-four . . . ninety-three . . . ninety-two . . .” Lux muttered, staring at the outline of the back door in the stark moonlight. Dessie turned off the flashlight, brushed off her slacks, and set the supplies behind the back door. “Let’s get going,” she said softly. “We can’t stay here,” she said. “We’ll have the whole family out here.”
Lux shook his head and started to speak, but Dessie put her index finger up to her mouth. She led the way down the walk to the doghouse beside the footbridge. The hammering in his temples became less noticeable with each stride. The cool dampness of the air near the creek washed over the skin on his arms and eased the sting on his cheekbones. The dog thumped her tail and then let out a whine, but Dessie stopped to quiet her, stroking her on the head. “Do you think we should take Lucy up into the woods with us?” she asked, looking up at him.
She stood on the edge of the field. She looked up from the dog’s bright eyes into his good eye. Her face was washed in moonlight, her eyes full of life, the hayfield furrows behind her a patchwork of light and shadow; like the sight of her after the accident, but more like a dream in black and white. Lux stared hard at Dessie to match this image with his memory of her.
He collected his thoughts. “Don’t worry. There ain’t nothing to be afraid of out there, and anyways, I’ll look after you,” he said. He stared at her, hoping she would believe this, and then he reached for her hand.
“You’re sure about that, Lux?” she asked, her eyes wide with a sense of adventure. A warmth shot through her firm hand into his. Lux nodded. “I am. You’ll see,” he said. Though he was trying look as serious as possible, a smile played across his face. He took it all in. At that moment, he felt like the future was as clear as the moon, so round, so bright, so close he could almost reach out and touch it.
Dessie paused and nodded, then with a slight grin she spoke up. “Well, I guess I should’ve brought along a broom,” she said. Lux stood back a step, trying to catch her meaning. “What? Why in the world did you say that?” he asked. He dropped her hand. Was she worried about taking the Jeep up into the woods? About getting the Jeep dirty? Was she worried about him? Did Bertram tell her to do that kind of thing?
“OK, not funny, I guess. Uhm, I was trying to make a joke,” Dessie said. “You know, a broom? So you could sweep me off my feet, of course.” She shrugged, holding back a smile.
Lux smiled back, and looked over at the tall white shape of the Price farmhouse against the dark hillside. “OK, OK. I get it,” he said. “Hey, we won’t need any old broom.”
Dessie laughed. “You sure got off to a good start, Ace,” she said, her phrasing an exact imitation of Bertram’s cadence and drawl.
Lux looked at her, catching on. He cleared his throat, swallowed. “Hey, I’ll give it my best shot, you’ll see,” he said. Then, reaching out for the thick twisted cable, partly to steady himself and partly to figure out where to set his feet, he took several unsteady strides onto the footbridge, making his way from plank to plank. With a sweep of his arm, Lux waved at anyone, real or imagined, who might happen to be watching them. It was all he could do to catch up to Dessie as she raced over the bridge, caught the roll bars, and swung herself up into the passenger seat of the open Jeep.
TWO
SOMEBODY TO LOVE (1967)
ALL THROUGH NINTH GRADE, BILLIE PRICE PICKED half-smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes out of the living room ashtray and smoked them down to her fingertips without her parents catching on. She rarely got to smoke a whole cigarette because Bertram kept his Luckies in his shirt pocket. Sloppy seconds would do. It was easy enough to collect an almost whole cigarette from the butts that he stubbed out and abandoned, little white crooked swans in the large black swan-shaped ashtray, but in order to smoke them she had to keep out of sight.
After her drama teacher had caught Billie smoking in the girls’ room back in September, her parents threatened to paddle her if it happened again. Bertram claimed to believe in “Spare the rod, spoil the child,” but he was a reluctant enforcer. But though infrequent, it had happened, and Billie did not want a repeat performance. Rose relied upon logic as well as good old-fashioned Pentecostal guilt. For her part, Billie figured that what her parents did not know would not hurt them or hurt her. Their ignorance would be her bliss, or at least help her avoid her mother’s sermonizing. She wasn’t worried about stunting her growth or shortening her life. She did not care about bad breath, wrinkles on her face, or worst of all, attracting the wrong kind of male attention. Rose had it all wrong. For Billie, the lure of smoking was so private, so special, a little glamorous gift that only she could give herself, a brief glimpse at the way life should be, instead of the way life was: school, chores, homework, school, church on Sunday mornings, church on Wednesday nights, homework, clothes on the line, clothes off the line, then repeat. One more endless month until the end of June when school let out.
Worst of all, Billie would need a new spot to smoke. She had been sneaking down to the crawl space under the front porch, but warmer weather meant the front porch could be occupied at any time. Other options included the spring house, a little storage pantry in the backyard dug into the steep hillside where seed potatoes and canned goods were stacked on moldy shelves, but that place was as spooky as a crypt; or the barn across the field, but too many stories about fires in barns kept Billie from smoking around dry hay in any kind of weather.
As for inside, Rose was always downstairs fussing around; upstairs, her parents’ bedroom was off-limits, and that left only the girls’ bedroom, a large rectangular room Bertram had divided using a three-quarter wall to create some privacy. Sound and light traveled over the divider, and smoke would too. A window in the walk-in closet could be cracked open for a few furtive puffs, but lately Dessie was always in that closet, dressing and undressing, trying on blouses, skirts, and sweaters to see what matched, dancing
