Swimming Sweet Arrow Part 4

So I drove all the winding roads from Mennonite Town to Church's Mountain, pa.s.sing all the houses where, when it was daylight, I'd see wash lines with white net caps and blue shirts twisting in the breeze. When I got to June's place, before I even got out of the car, two dogs came tearing up to see who I was. I was trying to keep them off of me, and then I heard June's voice, calling them.

"They're Luke's," she said when I got to her front door. "I should have warned you."

"Where were they every other time?"

"They have a kennel out back. They're mostly friendly, but there's no way for you to know that."

Because of all the commotion with the dogs, it was the first time I really looked at her face. She seemed the same as always. That surprised me, though I didn't know why.

"Come on in. I'll tie them up while you're visiting."

When I walked in the door, I saw the Jim Beam was already on the table. It seemed strange to me only for a second. Jim Beam was not the sort of thing June and I would ever drink on our own-we were the ones who always used to want something sweet to drink when we went parking with Ray and Del. Jim Beam was the kind of thing Ray would drink, and he would want June to be able to drink it, too. I knew because Del thought I should at least be able to drink a shot of Southern Comfort, even if I didn't like it, just to show people I wasn't a candy-a.s.s.

I had to work breakfast shift the next day, but I poured a shot anyway. I didn't want to give in to the feeling that I was getting mature about my drinking, and I wanted to keep June company.

When June came in from tying up the dogs, I said, "So, how's it going out here?"

She looked around at the old cabinets and the linoleum that was a design of baskets, and back to me at the kitchen table, and she said, "All right, it's all right."

We laughed, and I thought I knew what she meant: that nothing but nothing was what it was cracked up to be. Living with a guy wasn't all romance and s.e.x-it was also cleaning and cooking and paying bills. At least that's what I thought her look signified, and it was my feeling that whatever made her get the Jim Beam out wasn't going to go away anytime soon.

"No, really, it's all right," she said, and she shook her head a little when she said it, because I think she knew how her face must have looked. I was expecting bad news, and I was still expecting it when she said, "Well, Ray's gone and done it."

She went to a dish on the countertop, near the sink, and picked up a ring and slipped it on her finger.

"Garnet with a diamond chip on each side," she said, and showed me the ring.

I took her fingers in mine and studied the deep red stone. It wasn't some chintzy, pre-engagement job but a real, full-fledged ring.

"It's pretty," I said, and meant it. The garnet wasn't small, and the way the ring suited June's hand made me think that Ray had spent time not only finding the ring, but also thinking about how it would look against June's skin. Or so it seemed to me.

"It is pretty."

She looked at the ring again on her hand, then she took it off and put it back in the dish on the counter.

I said, "What, don't you like it?"

"I like it."

"Why aren't you wearing it, then?"

"I do wear it. I guess I'm getting used to it."

"Is it an engagement ring?" I said. "Is that what he wants?"

"It's not an engagement ring."

"What, it's just a gift?"

"Just a gift."

But it didn't make any sense. If the ring was just a gift, she wouldn't have to get used to it, and if June liked it, she would be wearing it on her hand and would have showed it to me first thing I walked in the door.

"What are you getting used to?" I said.

"I don't know. I guess I have to get used to how much he loves me."

The way she said it, I knew she was lying. About what piece of it, I couldn't say. Maybe she and Ray were fighting and she wasn't saying, or maybe it was something else. I didn't know. But June knew I could tell she was lying, and I figured over the course of our conversation or over the Jim Beam, she'd spill the deal.

"I hemmed up all my skirts again," I said, to change the subject for a while and give the conversation room to breathe.

"Weren't they already short?"

"Well, they're shorter now," I said. "I did it for tips."

"Yeah, 'cause you really get the big tippers at Dreisbach's."

Of course, it was the whiskey kicking in, but we laughed about that, and it felt good to laugh with her. I was glad we were not talking about rings and the like.

"Naw, really I did it for me," I said. "I wanted to see my own legs. You know?"

"I know."

And I knew she did understand. The kind of jobs we had, you couldn't ever really dress up, because the work would tear apart any kind of outfit, but you had to take some kind of care of yourself, because if you didn't, you got to feeling bad about yourself. After an eight-hour shift, my hair was coated with grease from the kitchen and smelled of french fries and cigarette smoke, but at least I could look down and see the shape of my legs. With all the lifting and walking I was doing, muscles in my thighs were getting hard. Right beside the long muscle in my thigh was a little hollow. I liked seeing the shadow and shape, and I liked being at work and being able to think of the way Del's face looked when he kissed me there.

June poured me another three fingers of Jim Beam and asked how everything was going with Del, but before I had a chance to say, "He's smoking and drinking every penny he earns," the dogs started howling and she went out to quiet them.

When she came back, she seemed to forget that she had asked me about Del.

"You want to know Ray's theory about the ring?" she said.

"Go."

"He says it's all in my hands. He says he'll marry me whenever I say."

"Is that what you want?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what do you say when he asks you about it?"

"He doesn't ever ask me. He says it's like a puppy. He says if you squeeze a puppy, the puppy runs away. If you let the puppy alone, it comes."

"And you're the puppy."

"I'm the one he's trying not to squeeze."

I thought giving a girl a ring was a pretty hard squeeze, but worse was Ray trying to use dog mentality on her. I couldn't believe it. I didn't say anything, though. It wasn't mine to say. Besides, I still felt like there was something she wasn't being honest about.

"What are you going to do about the ring?" I asked.

Before she could answer, Ray's brother, Luke, walked in the room. I knew he lived there, too, but it was still a surprise to see him. He was never around those times when Del and I parried with Ray and June, and in my mind I blocked him out. I knew nothing about Luke-he had graduated before June and I even got to high school. He was an animal I knew by sight only in that corral of a town. He looked a lot like Ray-light skin and the almost-black hair-but he was thinner and his face was hawklike. Guys I went to school with got that look when they grew too fast, or when they wrestled and always had to make weight.

"You going to party with us?" I asked.

He leaned back against the kitchen counter, slouching against the wood, his arms crossed over his chest. He mostly looked down instead of looking at us, but when he did look up, when he did meet my eyes, I learned two things about him: that he wanted to be there talking to us or listening to us talk, and that he was nothing like Ray.

"Naw," he said. "If I have one, I'll want another."

"Why can't you have one and another if you want it?" I said.

"Got to work."

"He's working eleven to seven this week," June said for him. When she spoke for him, he looked over at her, not turning his head but tilting it, pointing to her with his chin and lifting his eyes to her. That fast, I knew he spent a lot of time looking at June and listening to her. I knew that because-I don't know how to say this another way-when he looked at her and listened to her, he used his mouth as well as his eyes.

"Have the rest of mine," I said, and swirled my own gla.s.s. "I promise I won't let you have any more."

"All right," he said. And I watched him unfold himself from against the counter, and I watched him bring the gla.s.s up to his mouth, his fingers over the top edge of the gla.s.s. He didn't look at June again, but by then it didn't matter. I'd already seen.

"Thanks," he said.

"Listen to him. It's his whiskey," June said, and he smiled at that.

Luke left by the back door-way too early to go to work, but maybe he didn't want to be seen by me any longer. I waited a little while, but I knew better than anybody what I'd seen. I said to June, "What, are you f.u.c.king the brother, too?"

I listened to the clock tick and watched June stare at the Jim Beam. Then I listened to her say, of all things, "Not yet. But I will."

"June," I said, and made her name about three syllables long.

"Now you know who I love."

That shut me up for a good long moment. Instead of trying to say anything, I let myself look at her in the kitchen of that run-down house on the mountain. I was surprised that she said she loved Luke, because in my mind, I thought it was just f.u.c.king. Ray was the one who gave her a ring, and Ray was the one she was supposed to be living with. I figured if she was wanting to f.u.c.k Luke, it was for the same reason I'd wanted to f.u.c.k Frank Pardee: curiosity, danger.

"You're the only one who knows," she said.

"You and Luke know."

"I mean Ray doesn't know. That's what I'm asking you, not to say."

That was the first time I thought about my role in all of it. If I knew about Luke and didn't tell Ray, I would be lying, and if I told Del none of it, I would also be lying. Ray was his friend.

"What the f.u.c.k," I said. "I can't even believe it. What about Ray?"

"I love him. I love them both."

Her voice sounded sweet. I didn't know if it was the whiskey talking or if she really thought it was that simple.

"You just got done telling me you had to get used to how much Ray liked you," I said. "Now you say you love him."

"I do love him. He's the reason I met Luke."

"Oh, Jesus. You just mean you can't have one without the other."

"Something like that. Don't be mad at me, Vangie. I wanted to tell you the truth."

We sat there not talking. I knew I had no right to say anything to her, not given what I had done with Frank Pardee. I tried to separate June's actions from my own, though, because it was her life she was speaking about, and not mine at all.

"When did it start?" I said. "When did you start up with him?"

"I don't know. Almost as soon as I moved in. It took us a long time to even kiss."

"How long is a long time?"

"Weeks. More than a month. All we did at first was talk. It's almost as easy to talk to him as to you. I even told him things about Kevin. I didn't think I ever would, but I did."

She said she told Luke how, when she was eight and Kevin had just gotten his license, he used to put a sleeping bag in the back of his old El Camino so she could lie down and look up at the sky while he drove. It used to make her dizzy to look up into the blue, but she loved it, too. She couldn't reconcile, ever, how the brother who did that for her was the same person who drove so blindly and wildly that he hadn't even known the man he hit was a person and not a pole on the side of the road. June told that much to Luke, but no more, and Luke didn't ask her to say more.

"I never told you those things about Kevin. I hardly ever talk about him."

"I know," I said. I did not ask her if she told Luke the one story she had told me about Kevin: that it was one of his friends who f.u.c.ked her when she was just a kid.

"You know what he said, Vangie? When I told him I wouldn't tell him anything else, ever, about my brothers?"

"What?"

"He said, Everybody has some story they don't need to tell. And that was that."

I knew then from the way her voice sounded that she couldn't explain what she was feeling, or stop it. I didn't say anything then. I just sat at the table, watching her face.

"He and I haven't even screwed yet. If that's all it was, I wouldn't be doing it. I wouldn't put myself in this position. I wouldn't put Ray in it."

I didn't say anything, but I nodded.

"I can't tell you anything else, Vangie. I don't want to jinx it."

We did not have any more drinks after that, because Ray was due home at eleven, and because she had wanted the talk more than anything, not Jim Beam at all. And when I was leaving, because I didn't know what else to say, I said, "Well, I'm around."

"We didn't even talk about you."

I said, "It'll keep."

Even if we'd gone on talking that night, I wouldn't have told her what I'd done with Del's brother. She probably would have understood-certainly she would have understood now, if not before-but I did not want her to know. When I f.u.c.ked Frank, I got a brand and a mark and a knowledge, but I did not want to go on f.u.c.king him. The brand was enough. It was my scar, the sign of an accident or an illness or an adventure gone wrong.

June didn't want a scar. She wasn't going to f.u.c.k Luke just for the feeling of it. She did not want to do the thing once and then keep it secret inside her. She wanted to go on living it. I did not know how a person could do that, if it could be done. But I guessed it could be done, because there she was living in the house with the two of them and talking about love. Love.

When I went out to my truck that night, I walked by Luke's pickup, and that's how I knew he hadn't gone into town. I figured he was probably up on the mountain-or maybe just out behind the house, waiting for me to leave. When I saw his truck, it made me think about the way men held themselves and the way they talked and moved, and I knew it was a foreign world June was in. After I moved in with Del, I felt like I was in a foreign land as well, but it had to be even more true for June, living out there with the two of them. But June was probably like smoke finding her way about that world, because she was nothing if not smart, and smoke always finds a way in and out.

I didn't say shouldn't or can't to her. Maybe as a friend I should have, but to me, whatever was happening between her and Luke, between her and Ray, had already started. She was in the current of it.