Valentine(55)

And one night, when they saw a truck coming down the same dirt road they’d driven, Ginny sat up straight, watching, her gray eyes narrow and her shoulders square.

Should we go? D. A. asked.

Ginny said, No. We have just as much right to be here as anybody else. She climbed down from the hood and leaned through the open car window to take something out of the glove box, then turned the car radio up and climbed back onto the hood. When the jazz show came on the college radio station, they listened to Chet Baker and Nina Simone, the horn, the piano, the voices drifting across the sand and disappearing behind the dunes.

Try to remember this night, Ginny said. She had tears in her eyes. The moon rose orange and big across a dozen miles of pale sand in this otherwise empty corner of the world. She smiled at her daughter and handed over the car keys. You want to drive us back to the highway, D. A.? There’s about ten miles of dirt road before we hit pavement.

*

He tells her that when a young boy stepped out of a side tunnel and stood directly in front of him, they were in an underground room so close to the water table Jesse could smell the minerals. And he had been amazed that a boy had materialized in the dark like that, though he shouldn’t have been. They stood and stared at each other, two frightened boys with their mouths hanging open, and Jesse didn’t see the second boy until he jammed the butt of his rifle into Jesse’s left ear.

He doesn’t tell Debra Ann that the echo from his service revolver was still bouncing off the dirt walls when he stood and looked at the two boys with matching holes in their chests, that he had shaken his head against the odd dullness in his bleeding ear, as if someone had suddenly thrown up a brick wall between him and the world. It wouldn’t be right to tell her that he wakes up thinking about them. Were they brothers? And if they were, did their mama sit up all night long, waiting for them to come home and wondering what happened?

Jesse has saved nearly enough money to get his truck back, and he’s starting to believe he might make it home before winter, when one of the dancers tells him that Boomer has moved out of town. She hands him a beverage napkin with Boomer’s new phone number and address on it. He says to come on out when you have his money.

Jesse studies the phone number written just beneath the club’s logo, a woman’s shadowy figure, her large breasts and the bunny ears coming out of her head. Penwell, TX, trailer behind the old gas station.

How am I going to get out to Penwell? he asks the woman.

It’s only about fifteen miles outside of town. She runs her hand gently up and down his arm. I’m sorry, sugar, I’d help you if I could. And in spite of the bad news, Jesse feels the warmth of her touch for hours.

*

There has been no rain for nine months, and the sprinklers run day and night. D. A. brags to anyone who will listen that she hasn’t had a real bath since the middle of June. She just runs through the closest sprinkler and calls it a day. It is the best thing about not having her mother around, she tells Aimee, who says her own mother never stops watching her.

Aimee is six inches shorter than Debra Ann, with eyelashes so pale they are nearly invisible. Together, the girls run through the sprinklers in Aimee’s backyard while their faces burn, freckle, and peel. When D. A.’s bangs grow so long they cover her eyes, she gets on her hands and knees and pretends to be a sheepdog chasing Aimee around the yard. They pass bags of chips, tall tales, chiggers, and a case of ringworm back and forth seamlessly. The bug bites that line their arms and legs turn into sores and scabs and scars. When their shoulders turn the color of tomatoes, they sit in the shade of the cinder-block fence and ignore Aimee’s mother, who comes to the back door every few minutes and looks anxiously around the yard. Aimee says the phone never stops ringing at her house. Yesterday, she heard her mom ask somebody if they weren’t tired of it yet and then slam the phone down so hard, it probably busted the caller’s eardrum.

At the YMCA pool, Mrs. Whitehead sits stiffly at the edge of a lounge chair with the baby in her arms, watching Aimee jump from the high dive for the first time. When it’s her turn, Debra Ann stands trembling, skinny and full of fear, for a few long seconds at the board’s edge, but then she looks down and sees Aimee treading water in the deep end, urging her on, and she hurls her body into the air. In the seconds after she hits the water, before she kicks her way back to the surface, she thinks she can do anything. Aimee says she feels the same way.

Their faith is rooted in their bodies, the muscle and sinew and bone that holds them together and says move. They are track stars and gymnasts and Olympic swimmers who win gold medals in diving and synchronized swimming. While Mrs. Whitehead changes the baby’s diaper and tries to get him to take his new bottle, they dunk each another and dive off the side. They sink to the pool’s floor and sit with their bottoms pressed against the rough surface while they gaze up at shoals of children, skinny limbs casting long shadows across the water. They hold their breath for as long as they can, and when they rise from the water, gasping and sputtering, Mrs. Whitehead is standing by the pool’s edge, shouting for someone to help them.

What is wrong with you? Aimee yells. She takes a deep breath and dives back into the water, skinny legs kicking hard, carrying her away from her mother.

We’re okay! D. A. says. We’re just playing.

Mrs. Whitehead shifts the baby onto her other hip and adjusts his hat. I want y’all to get out and come sit down for a minute, she tells Debra Ann. Please, right now.