“I suppose so. And I think you understand me. Do you, Lorraine?”
“I guess so.”
“Then you don’t think I’m saying these things to be critical? We’re still friends?”
“I have to drive a couple of kids home,” Lon lied. “They’ll think I ditched them.”
“Yes. Well, you run along, Lorraine.” And, strangely confused, Lon thought, for one who had guided the whole conversation, “But you do understand about writing notes to … And about boys. You do understand what I mean?”
“Sure. I’ll be seeing you, Miss Chamberlin.”
And she hurried into the joy-filled corridor where someone yelped, “T.G.T.I.F.!” and a chorus responded, “You know it! Thank God this is Friday—the last Friday!” She hurried along the dark, warm hall, scalding moisture clouding her vison of the marbled walls until she was in the students’ parking lot where the hot salt zigzag tears burned on her face. It began then; the thin trickle of sound that was not a sound within her head. It was deeper inside her body, where so much was compressed that could not be revealed, where the buried questions begged to be released. Not why am I unlike the others, but why are the others unlike me? And I want, I want, but what is it I want?
Give a cheer, give a cheer,
For the boys who drink the beer,
In the cellars of Wellington High!
A raked Chevy screamed past her and the melody of the Caisson Song filled the dusty yard:
They are brave, they are bold,
And the liquor they can hold
Is the glory of Wellington High!
No one was waiting beside the beat-up Plymouth. No one waited for the gangling odd-ball with the hazel eyes, as no one had ever waited. Only the questions waited, as if in some seldom-dusted cobwebbed corner of her consciousness. And who would answer the questions? Who now? There were answers that some sphynx-like mother creature might know. Yet someone who, unmotherlike, would not advise, saying only, “This is why you ran to the bathroom and were sick when Bud Schaeffer touched your breast and kissed you; this is why you ache inside, running to the refuge of the Island, the secret you would have shared with the woman in English III; and this is why you trembled in tears and a violent gladness the afternoon her hand touched yours and she smiled—smiling, you were certain, for no one else.”
Lon pulled open the car door. Far down the street the bawling voices receded:
And it’s guzzle, guzzle, guzzle,
As it trickles down your muzzle,
And you hear them shout, “More beer!”
MORE BEER!
Lon parked the Plymouth, stepped out of it, and walked into the house.
It might be that the elementary school PTA was hosting a farewell tea for the teachers. Or maybe, even, the Brotherhood Week Committee was meeting at the church. Maybe, even, the Civic Betterment unit of the Women’s Club was in session. Whatever the reason, Lon rejoiced. Her mother was not at home!
Wild, way out, crazy. No comments about the jeans Lon pulled on being belted too low. No shaking pronouncements about what people thought of a girl who tugged a red cotton T-shirt over her boyish chest and let it go at that. No queries about why Lon whacked a clod of half-frozen hamburger from a package in the refrigerator.
She took the ground meat to the open garage, laying it on the cement in a square of sunlight. Waiting for it to defrost, she knocked the neck off a 7-Up bottle with a hammer. Enjoying the process, she demolished the painted green bottle completely, pushing a few of the smaller pieces into an old leather glove. Then, breathing the short breaths of perverse excitement, the quick snatches of air that denote elation, she pounded the glove viciously with the hammer. When the glass was reduced to rough powder, she stuffed the hamburger inside the glove. She pounded meat and glass together under the leather binding. When the ingredients were one, she scooped the lethal mixture into a brown manila envelope, tossed the glove carelessly into a trash barrel, and returned, trembling with anticipated revenge, to the car.
It was not a long drive to her destination. She parked inconspicuously, sneaked even more inconspicuously to a point of vantage.
Watching Miss Chamberlin’s dog race the length of the redwood fence, Lon wondered if it were true. That business Mr. Beckwith had told her about Dalmatians. “Most other breeds can’t stand them. Other dogs just have it in ‘em to hate Dalmatians,” Saying it as though owning a stinking pet shop made him an authority. “It’s the color of their eyes,” he had explained sagely. And had added in an awesome voice, as though speaking the Great Hidden Wisdom, “And the spots!”
It was, Lon decided, a crock of the well-known article, hating herself immediately for borrowing her father’s army phrase.
“Here, boy!” she called.
The dog, falling all over his paws, hurling his black-flecked body in a convulsion of joy at being noticed, ran to the corner of the fence.
I’ll bet she’s crazy about this dog. Maybe she hasn’t got a friend in the world except this dog….
Forepaws on the inside wall of the board fence, the dog stretched his head upward for human contact. Lon patted the sleek, sun-warm head. Her other hand dangled the brown envelope against her knee.
It’ll crack her up to lose this beautiful dog. She won’t have anybody …
“Here, boy. Got something for you.”
The Dalmatian ducked his head, twisting it then into position to gnaw cautiously at her hand.
“You’re sure you like dogs?” Mr. Beckwith had asked before hiring her. “No use taking on somebody that don’t like dogs.”
“I love ‘em,” Lon had said.
“What kind you got?”
“Oh. Well, I don’t actually have one.”
“That’s a fine kettle of fish.” Peering at her suspiciously.
“No, y’see, my mother’s president
