Last Summer Boys(33)

“No ma’am. Nothing I love more than new-shirt shopping.”

The rest of the coffee goes down the hatch.

I sigh. That’s it. Ma is dragging us all into town to shop. Of all days.

Fine, then. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, we’ll begin our search.





We come out of the five-and-dime into Main Street’s bright sun. It’s about three in the afternoon. Automobiles bake at the meters along the sidewalk. Across the street, a man in a blue uniform writes a ticket and slips it under the windshield wiper of one.

“John Thomas, you’re growing like a weed,” Ma sighs. “You’ll be too tall for these in a month.” She shifts the package under her arm: three pairs of pants for me, two shirts each for Will and Pete.

A car crawls past us, shiny green in the hot afternoon.

“Can I have a dime for a paper?” Will asks.

She hands him a folded, dusty-looking dollar. “Bring me the change.”

Will powers ahead of us; Mr. Murray’s newsstand is at the other end of Main Street.

“Can we get ice cream now?” I ask.

Ma sighs again. “I suppose.”

“I’m going to get mint chocolate chip,” I decide.

“Butter pecan,” Frankie replies.

Pete and Ma don’t walk fast enough, so we leave them and take off ourselves down Main Street. A second car rolls by. This one is cream-colored and full of teenagers.

“Busy afternoon,” I say to Frankie, and it seems to me he’s got something stuck in his throat because he coughs at that.

We pass Mr. Wistar’s hardware store, then Mr. Hudspeth’s barbershop. His door is tied open with a piece of string, and I wave as we go past.

Ernie’s Luncheonette & Homemade Ice Cream Parlor is across the street. There’s a bell above the door that rings as we come in. Chilly air washes over us, stirred by a pair of fans that spin lazy circles overhead. It smells like melted chocolate, peanuts, bananas, and butterscotch. Afternoon sun pours through stenciled windows and gleams off a black-and-white tiled floor and the red booths along the wall. I guide us over to one and set my pocketknife down on the table to show it’s taken before taking Frankie over to the glass counter.

“Afternoon, boys,” says the man as he comes off his stool. As he puts down his newspaper, I recognize Bobby Kennedy’s smiling face in the black-and-white photograph.

Frankie and me have each tried two samples of ice cream when Ma and Pete walk in, sending the tiny bell above the door into its dance again.

“Four cones, please,” says Ma, opening her purse.

The man takes the dipper from a jar of cold water and rolls brightly colored balls of ice cream out of the tubs behind the glass. He stacks them three each onto the cones.

We eat the ice cream in our booth. It’s delicious, but I can’t eat it fast enough, and soon I’ve got mint chocolate chip dripping down my chin. Ma passes me a napkin.

Beyond the stenciled windows, the cream-colored car of teenagers cruises by again.

“Didn’t we just see them?” Frankie asks.

“They’re driving Idiot’s Circle,” says Pete as he crunches on his cone.

“What’s that?”

“Imagine you’re a high-school guy with a car and nowhere to go,” Pete tells him. “You pick up your girl and drive her around town in a loop. Down Main Street, back up Second Street, and down Main Street again.”

Frankie frowns. “And that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

I take another lick. “Sounds stupid. Riding around in a car for hours.”

Pete smiles. “Depends on the girl.”

Ma gives him a look.

“Where’s Will at?” I’ve gotten down to my own cone now. “He’s missing ice cream.”

“Probably jabbering at Mr. Murray about his hero, Bobby Kennedy,” says Pete.

“Let him be,” Ma commands. “It’s good to have heroes.”

We finish our ice cream cones to the hum of the tired ceiling fans. Will never shows up. It’s not until we step back into the blazing afternoon that we see him again. He comes up the street, a rolled newspaper tucked under his arm.

Ma holds out her hand for the change.

“Radio reports are good,” Will says. “Kennedy is going to clean Humphrey’s clock!”

He don’t even seem upset that he’s missed the ice cream.

We start back up the street, with him telling Ma about polling numbers so far.

At the next block that cream-colored sedan full of teenagers rolls up beside us. They wait at the light while we cross and I recognize a familiar, beautiful face behind the windshield in the passenger seat.

“Hey, look!” I point.

In the passenger seat of the car, Anna May’s long hair is the color of summer. She’s curled it so that it cascades down her long neck, cupping her round shoulders. We ain’t seen her since the day she and her friends found us sleeping naked at the creek. I was too flustered to notice how she looked then, but now her blue eyes meet mine through the windshield and it seems all the breath goes out of me.

Anna May smiles, and for an instant us boys stop in the middle of the street.

Next to Anna May, behind the wheel, is a boy: Everett Scott. He’s big, bigger even than Pete. Brown hair curls down a wide, fat forehead and stops above tiny brown eyes.