Machine Dreams (29 page)

“Billy is really getting good-looking,” Lee Ann went on. “The older girls all notice him now. You know, Kato is supposed to be pretty wild.”

“Oh, Kato is fourteen,” Danner said dismissively.

“That never stopped Rhonda, when she and Riley were going together. Actually, it was Riley that told me about Kato. He said the high school boys already call her Rhonda Two.” Lee Ann stopped talking abruptly, aware she’d said too much. “Look, Riley didn’t tell me as a joke. He was kind of concerned, but he didn’t want you to hear about it and worry.”

“I don’t believe stories about Kato. People only talk about her because she’s pretty and comes from a poor family.”

Lee Ann nodded. Shinner Black, Kato’s father, was a sometimes drunk.

Together, both girls stepped back and surveyed the big tray of ketchup bottles.

Lee Ann held up her hands, displaying red-smeared fingernails. “Watts,” she deadpanned. “Is God there?”

“Don’t be silly,” Danner laughed. “These ketchups are beautiful. Ketchups are always a great career, even in Watts.”

When she rode through Bellington with Riley, Danner felt beautiful. She was relaxed and tired when she left work; she’d taken a shower and put on makeup in the employees’ bathroom, and thrown away her nylons, cheap ones inevitably ruined by the end of the day. The college banquet service had a reputation for hiring “personable” girls, and there was a kind of status about the anonymous-looking uniform; girls sometimes wore them on dates with steady boyfriends when there wasn’t much time to change. Riley’s car, a canary yellow Mustang with a black top and oversized tires, was well-known around town. He was always early, waiting for her, lounging against the Mustang. By the time they met, the heat had broken and Danner walked toward the bright car, the campus shade trees around her rippling a little with wind. He stood with his arms crossed, in a sport shirt and clean white Levi’s, smelling of men’s cologne and smoking a cigarette. They drove down Main Street on the way to the Parkette, with the evening cooling and all the windows down. Danner sat close beside Riley, trying to see the street as though she’d never been there before. The brick and clapboard buildings were twilit, the colors deep. Main Street looked too pretty to be real.

Riley steered with one hand. “Baby, what are you thinking about?”

“Nothing, really.” She didn’t like to be asked what she was thinking.

The courthouse sat back on its big lawn across from the fire station, the gold spire bright against the dark blue dusk. The huge evergreen, used every winter as a town Christmas tree, stood like a backdrop behind the high school football scoreboard. Names of scheduled opponents and game dates were in blue;
WON
or
LOST
would be painted on each white line in red. The street was nearly empty. Parking meters along the sidewalk looked decorative. All the small businesses—Liberty Lunch, the Casualaire, HP Hardware—were closed, their windows lit.

Tomorrow morning Main Street would be different, crowded and hot. Saturdays, miners cashed checks in their hard hats and
rumpled clothes; country families stood in line at the welfare office before shopping at Woolworth’s. They choked the three blocks that were Bellington’s downtown. Their children were numerous and pale, dressed in ill-fitting clothes. They wore muddy shoes with no socks, or they were barefoot. Their ankles looked battered, scratched and mosquito-bitten. The women were very thin or very fat, their faces middle-aged and set as though frozen. Their hair was never styled but hung past their shoulders, occasionally restrained with a child’s cheap barrette too small to have much effect. They were dirty and smelled of dirt, despite the cakes of harsh yellow soap dispensed by the County. The children were usually clean except for their feet; their once-a-week cleanliness made them look even paler. Grade schools and the junior high were full of country kids, but many dropped out by high school. Danner remembered looking at them intently on the school bus from Brush Fork when she was a child. She would stare at them in profile, afraid but fascinated. Their eyelashes were flaky with the dust of sleep or neglect.

Riley pulled up at a stop light and put his arm around her shoulders. “Mr. Losch asked me if you were going to enter the Miss Jaycees contest.”

Danner gave him a surprised look. Losch ran the A&P where Riley worked. He was a member of the Jaycees, merchants and professional men who sponsored the contest every fall for high school girls.

“Why not?” Riley asked. “You’ll be sixteen by September. You could win a scholarship for college, a thousand dollars.”

Danner shifted a little away from him. Last year, Rhonda Thompson had been runner-up as a senior entrant. Danner supposed Riley wanted her to do better.

“Danner, you’re one of the prettiest girls they’d have, and you’re smarter than anybody who’d enter.”

“Thanks a lot. Anyway, they don’t care if you’re smart.”

“Losch thinks you’d have a good chance. I didn’t ask him—he mentioned it to me.” Riley looked at her pointedly, still impressed. “Doc Reb Jonas is one of the judges. Isn’t he an old friend of your father’s?”

Danner shrugged, looking straight ahead. “They don’t see
each other much now.” Mitch certainly wasn’t a member of the Jaycees. He still belonged to the Elks’, who kept a dim lunchroom down by the tracks. “Riley, you know I wouldn’t enter that contest.”

He made the turn onto the Winfield road, easing past the Mobil station and picking up speed. “Boys win money for sports. Why shouldn’t girls win money for looking good?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to. Think about standing on a stage in a bathing suit while Mr. Losch asks you what your goals are.”

Riley smiled. “You could talk for a half hour about your goals, and you only need to come up with three minutes.”

“How do you know anything about my goals?”

“I know,” he said, entertained. He slowed as they neared Nedelson’s, checking out the parking lot for friends. The parking spaces were defined by metal posts fitted with intercoms and bright yellow menus fastened behind plastic. Riley parked on the far side of the lot and leaned out to press the intercom button. A warble of static came through the speaker.

“Hello?” Riley yelled.

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead.”

“Two double burgers with tomato, one plain cheeseburger, one large fries, two vanilla shakes.” He leaned back and lit a cigarette. “What if Lee Ann was in the contest. Would you enter then?”

Danner frowned. “No. Forget it, will you?”

He smiled. His eyes were extremely blue.

Food came quickly at the Parkette. Within five minutes, a girl brought the car tray, hooked it onto the half-open window, and collected money. Riley passed Danner her shake and cheeseburger. From across the lot they could hear someone’s loud radio. They shared the french fries and ate comfortably, without talking. Danner loved just sitting there with him; he felt so familiar, like family.

The horseshoe circle between the rows of cars was constantly filled with slowly moving automobiles. Boys with girls simply wheeled into a spot, but the ones who were alone drove around and around, yelling to each other and whooping before turning
onto the highway again. Danner watched them. In a year or so, Billy would have a car. He’d get his learner’s permit in the fall; he had a job with State Road this summer cutting brush, already saving money. Danner couldn’t imagine seeing him in his own car, like Riley. She remembered Kato then.

“Riley, what is all this about Kato?”

For a moment he didn’t answer. “Oh, hell. Lee Ann can’t keep her mouth shut. It’s a good thing I don’t tell her anything important.”

“I call it important,” Danner said, “and telling people only spreads the story.”

Riley regarded her, irritated. “I didn’t even tell the story.”

Danner gazed out the windshield of the Mustang, the straw of her milkshake in her mouth. The frothy liquid was so cold and sweet it stung her teeth. She swallowed. “What is the story?”

“There isn’t any.” He picked up his second foil-wrapped burger, pretending the subject was closed.

“You might as well tell me.”

He ate the sandwich as though considering. “A few months ago, a couple of guys went over to Kato’s house. She was home alone and they had a few beers and played around a little. Nothing really happened, nothing serious.” He paused. “It’s just that it was two guys.”

Danner said nothing, waiting.

“I guess she was tipsy. Must have been.” He crumpled the foil and put the paper and empty cups on the Parkette tray. “It was before Billy was going out with her. Besides, he can probably handle himself.” Riley sat looking at the steering wheel. “I’ll talk to him if you want me to.”

“No, don’t say a word.” She wrapped her sandwich back up in the foil and handed it to him. “I don’t want this. Let’s go.”

“Okay.” He moved closer, then kissed her. “You have to understand that not everyone is as virtuous as you.”

“I’m not virtuous.”

Riley grinned, trying to coax a smile from her. “You’re not? You mean it’s all an act?”

She did smile. “What do you want? Am I supposed to act like I’m twenty-five when I’m sixteen?”

“You’re not sixteen yet. And by the time you’re twenty-five, we’ll have three kids.” He took the tray off the window and propped it on the intercom box, then turned the ignition key of the Mustang. “Since Mitch is so nervous lately, I’m taking you home early. But first let’s skip the drive-in and visit his namesake.”

Mitch Concrete was an ideal place to park and they’d discovered it by accident. Danner hadn’t been to the plant her father once owned since she was a child, but one night the previous winter she and Riley had driven past the entrance. Curious, Danner asked Riley to drive up the steep dirt lane to the yard. They sat looking, then stayed for an hour. The plant wasn’t too far from Nedelson’s Parkette, on the highway to Winfield; it was off a side road called Graveyard Road, and up a hill. There was an office building and two prefab garages, and the tipple structure where materials were poured from above into the rolling barrels of the trucks. What materials? Sand? Gravel? Danner wasn’t sure, but she had a vague memory of seeing it happen. Now the mixers sat haphazardly around the lot as though their drivers had left them abruptly. They were big rugged trucks, worn and snaggled. A few might be the same trucks her father had owned. Since the year before, he’d sold cars at the Chevrolet garage in Bellington, and little mention was made of his work at home.

Last winter, the snowy plant had looked ghostly and beautiful by night. The piles of dirt were white mounds, the trucks dusted, the tipple a square snow-hung tower with the sheer white mountain of gravel above and behind it. Riley and Danner could see the lights of the town from the plant, and the Winfield road snaking past the Parkette. Cars had moved on the road, long beams of their headlights played out across falling snow. Always, the plant was deserted. Graveyard Road led only to the cemetery; no police patroled it, no one drove by.

Danner and Riley were so sure of their privacy that sometimes, in summer, Riley spread a cloth and they lay down so they could see the stars. The plant was a kind of moonscape by August—not a scrap of green. The dirt of the yard was blond and dry, and puffed like smoke when Riley skipped stones across it. Still, after dusk and into the night, there was the same private quiet as in winter. Tonight they stayed in the car, and the crickets made
a staccato chiming in the brush. Danner thought of Mitch Concrete as a distant planet still revolving in the past. Hymns should sound in the background of the emptiness, very low, wisps of hymns. Riley kissed her forehead, her temples, her throat; she remembered the ministers, their bodies so attentive, singing to each other.

“Well,” Riley said. He had pulled away and was watching her when she opened her eyes. He touched the bridge of her nose and the lines of her lips. “I bet your parents did a little spooning here. Maybe they still do, on the sly.”

Danner shook her head. “They were already married when he started the plant. Anyway, my parents haven’t slept together in years.”

“You don’t know what your parents have done.” He put one arm along the back of the seat and bunched her straight hair in his hand. “Jean and Mitch are all right. Parents always make it seem they don’t have a sex life.”

“They’re all right to you—they like you. That doesn’t mean they’re all right to each other.”

“You’re wrong,” Riley said.

She wasn’t, but there was no point explaining. Danner supposed she knew more than most daughters; her mother had no one else to talk to. It was curious—Riley never wanted to admit that her parents didn’t get along, as though they were his parents.

He was looking at her. “Listen,” he said, “I have a present for you. I’m not going to give it to you until your birthday, but I have to show it to you now so you won’t be too surprised.”

Danner smiled. “Riley, if it’s for my birthday, don’t give it to me now.”

“I have to,” he said. He took a small white box out of his pocket. “Put out your hand.”

She did. He put the box on the flat of her palm, then opened it for her. Inside was a gold ring cushioned in white velvet; the center of the ring was a small gold heart set with a diamond chip. “Oh,” she said, “it’s beautiful.”

He circled her wrist with his fingers. “Danner, I want us to be engaged.”

“I can’t,” she said, nearly whispering, “you know I can’t.”

He put his finger gently against her mouth. “I don’t mean we should tell your parents. As far as they know, it’s just a present. That’s why it’s a small diamond—when we tell them, I’ll give you a different ring.”

She looked at the ring in confusion. The chip of diamond glittered. Riley kept talking. How could he see her face and just keep talking?

“… You’ve got two more years of high school. When you graduate I’ll give you a real diamond, and we’ll tell them together. I’ll be halfway through college by then.” He looked searchingly at her, trying to pinpoint her reservations. “I know you want to go to school. You can go to Lynchburg with me, or we can go here in town when I get my grades up, or to the University—”